8 Golden Lessons from the Book "Direct from Dell"

 

Introduction

“Direct from Dell” is an autobiographical book written by Michael Dell sharing his story of starting the business from scratch to building the business empire. Along with the eye-opening lessons scattered throughout the pages, one of the beauties that can be noticed is that the writer uses both "he" and "she" pronouns to refer to customers or team members showing respect for both genders. This book is highly recommended to people who are or aspire to become successful entrepreneurs. This article explores the eight valuable lessons from the book that can guide entrepreneurs and business enthusiasts towards success.

Lesson 1: Execution Over Perfection

In the business world, prioritizing execution over perfection is crucial. Many people wait for the perfect time to start their project. Not only business projects but also personal pursuits like beginning an exercise routine, embarking on a reading journey, or venturing into book writing do not require any perfect time to start. What truly matters is commencing the journey rather than fixating on perfect timing. Perfect starting is not the point, but the important thing is to start and evolve along the journey. A little late might be too late in business.

Quote from the Book

“The pace of business moves too quickly these days to waste time noodling over a decision. And while we strive to always make the right choice, I believe it’s better to be first at the risk of being wrong than it is to be 100 per cent perfect two years too late.”

Lesson 2: Perfection is a Myth

There is no such thing as perfect, especially in a business organization. Business organization, no matter how professionally managed or whatever it has achieved, cannot be perfect. Because perfect means the state where no change is required and in business, the way business is managed requires continuous changes as per the change in the market. There is always room for progress, always something more to be done and achieved. Improvements can always be made, and businesses should be open to change. Perfection is a myth.

Quote from the Book

““There’s a saying in the technology field that what can be done, will be done. If something can be improved, someone will figure out a way to do it. No matter what your business, that someone had better be you.”

Lesson 3: Respect Customers

Quote from the Book

“If you’re trying to solve a customer’s problem, go and ask him how he’d like to see it solved. This kind of problem-solving “empathy” leads to innovative thinking.”

“In the market, the customer is indeed the king. Due respect should be given to the king. The first thing that shows respect to the customer is producing not what the business wants to produce but what the customers want to buy. There is no point in producing anything that customers do not buy. Once goods or services are sold, continuous customer service is equally important to show respect to the customers. Customer loyalty and the strength of a long-lasting brand depend on customer service. The goods and services should be modified as per the requirements of the customers. For that, continuous feedback from the customers should be collected and that feedback must be taken seriously. Respecting customers is paramount..”

Quote from the Book

“Jack Welch of General Electric (a Dell customer, we’re happy to say) has been quoted as saying, “Everything we do is aimed at either getting a customer or keeping a customer.” That’s a belief that’s always guided Dell, too. I spend about 40 percent of my time with customers. When people hear that, they often say, “Wow—that’s a lot of time to spend with customers.””

Lesson 4: Direct Sell Approach

The massive success of Dell is significantly attributed to the least taken route by the other businesses, which is the “Direct Sell" approach of the company. Dell is guided by the principle of selling the computers directly to the end consumers, breaking the barriers between distributors and retailers. As mentioned above, Dell is strongly convinced that the product must be as per the needs of the customers. To understand the needs of the customers, the company must collect feedback from the customers. Feedback is essential for the survival and growth of any business. If the company is in direct contact with the end users of the product, feedback can be collected easily. A large part of the genuine feedback is lost along the way if it is collected through distributors and retailers. When the company which manufactures the product is in direct contact with the customers, their comments and suggestions can be directly messaged to the engineering department to modify the product swiftly. The title of the book, "Direct from Dell", shows how Dell values the direct sell approach.

Lesson 5: Use of E-commerce in the Business

Dell was an early adopter of e-commerce, using its website for custom configurations and pricing. The book describes how sales were boosted using the site: www.dell.com. The author describes that using this innovative approach saved the cost of human resources for the company and saved time of visiting the store for the consumers, highlighting the importance of embracing e-commerce. Dell started selling computers online when no one believed it was possible. The belief was that customers would not buy computers from those who do not have physical stores. But Dell was among the first companies to make online sales and it paid off well. The use of e-commerce for business has become inevitable for all businesses.

Lesson 6: Delegation

The decision of delegation is crucial in any business. While manufacturing the computers, Dell repeatedly had to face the problem of deciding whether to manufacture the parts by Dell itself or buy from other vendors. Many times, it was more beneficial for the company to buy the parts from other vendors so that the company could focus on the product itself. Dell's approach of focusing on core competencies is a valuable lesson in delegation.

Quote from the Book

“…someone at Boeing once said, “We want to be experts at airplanes, not computers.”

Lesson 7: The Goal-oriented Team

Ensuring that the entire team understands how their work impacts the overall business is essential. The book describes that at Dell, even the non-finance employees such as engineers were provided with Profit and Loss Statements and Balance Sheets. They were provided with insights into how their work affects the sales, profit, cash flow etc.

Lesson 8: Liquidity, Profitability and Growth

In 1993 when Dell faced a serious downturn in the business, Dell prioritized the company's liquidity, profitability, and growth, in that order. This is such an eye-opening strategy. If a business focuses on profitability or growth before liquidity, the business will face a financial crisis. Liquidity is the first factor to be considered by the business. But liquidity is not the final goal. After the business is in a comfortable liquidity position, its target should be profitability. A business cannot survive long without adequate profit. However, rapid growth in profitability for a certain time does not guarantee the long-term sustainability of the business. The long-term sustainability of the business depends on the growth of the business. The end goal of the business should be growth, but it must be preceded by a series of other factors.

Conclusion

"Direct from Dell" provides a wealth of lessons for entrepreneurs and business leaders. Michael Dell's journey serves as a testament to the significance of adaptability, innovation, and customer-centric approaches in attaining success.

Book Review: Long Walk To Freedom

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.....my commitment to my people, to the millions of South Africans I would never know or meet, was at the expense of the people I knew best and loved most. It was as simple and yet as incomprehensible as the moment a small child asks her father, “Why can you not be with us?” And the father must utter the terrible words: “There are other children like you, a great many of them . . .” and then one’s voice trails off.

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"Long Walk to Freedom" is an autobiography of the South African leader, Nelson Mandela. Six hundred plus pages of this book requires patience or at least a certain degree of interest to peek into the life of a leader who sacrificed his life for his belief. The book takes us into the journey from the young boyhood of Nelson Mandela growing into adulthood enrolling in the college and gaining acquaintance with the oppression by the white people to the black people. The journey then takes us into the rise in political awareness in the mind of young Nelson Mandela. He becomes member of the organization called African National Congress (ANC). The book also describes his experience to work in a law firm and then starting his own law firm with his partner. In Africa, the black people were badly discriminated and they were avoided from man of their basic rights. Nelson Mandela raised his voice and led the people against the apartheid. For taking part in the struggle against the injustice to the black people, he went through lot of hardship. He was imprisoned for about 27 years. All the events which happened during his stay in the prison is so beautifully described, his experience was mostly painful though. He along with his wife and his children suffered equally for his fight against the apartheid. The book is beautifully written and all the pages gripped me to the end.

Although I am not particularly interested in politics, this book kept me spellbound for many reasons. The book gave me a closer view of the South African tribal lives and their customs. There was nasty segregation of the black people. What really interested me was the similarity between the political development in South Africa and in Nepal. After so many times trying to negotiate in peaceful manner and failing, Nelson had to start armed struggle against the government. Many people died in the armed struggle in South Africa. Same thing happened in Nepal during the armed struggle in the name of Maoist movement. After the government and the armed struggle force came into peaceful talks, there was election of constituent assembly in South Africa. Same thing happened in Nepal. Mandela and Frederik Willem de Klerk got Nobel peace prize. No wonder Babu Ram Bhattarai, Prachanda and Girija Prasad Koirala were expecting Nobel prize for peace.  So many similarities between the political development between the two countries except for the fact that no high level leader in Nepal who were on the side of the armed struggle got imprisoned and non of them had the honesty and integrity as Nelson Mandela. 

Although the book is pretty long and detailed I still find some details missing. It is a curiosity in my mind which has not been fully addressed by the book. I wished that Mandela had disclosed minutely about the source of fund for mobilizing armed struggle and how finance was managed. After coming out of the prison, I wonder how he was able to build his house and how his personal finance was managed. It would have been really nice to look into how money is managed under such abnormal circumstances. 

Overall, the book is captivating. I really enjoyed every page of it. It is not a long-boring political book. Rather it is a book which takes us into the pain, struggle and sacrifice of the leader for the betterment of the society at large. I would recommend this book to anyone who would like to meet a strong and determined person. If you like this book, you will also love "My Experiments with Truth", an autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi. I would rate this book 4 out of 5 stars. 

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A few words extracted from this amazing book:      

"I had been taught that to have a B.A. meant to be a leader, and to be a leader one needed a B.A. But in Johannesburg I found that many of the most outstanding leaders had never been to university at all. Even though I had done all the courses in English that were required for a B.A., my English was neither as fluent nor as eloquent as many of the men I met in Johannesburg who had not even received a school degree." 

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"I have always believed that exercise is not only a key to physical health but to peace of mind."

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"I  had  concluded  that  the  time  had  come  when  the  struggle  could  best  be  pushed  forward  through negotiations. If we did not start a dialogue soon, both sides would be plunged into a dark night of oppression, violence, and war. My solitude would give me an opportunity to take the first steps in that direction, without the kind of scrutiny that might destroy such efforts. We had been fighting against white minority rule for three-quarters of a century. We had been engaged in the armed struggle for more than two decades. Many people on both sides had already died. The enemy was strong and resolute. Yet even with all  their bombers and tanks, they must have sensed they were on the wrong side of history. We had right on our side, but not yet might. It was clear to me that a military victory was a distant  if  not  impossible  dream.  It  simply  did  not  make  sense  for  both  sides  to  lose  thousands  if  not  millions  of  lives  in  a  conflict..."

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"Walter considered what I told him. I could see he was uncomfortable, and at best, lukewarm. “In principle,” he said, “I am not against negotiations. But I would have wished that the government initiated talks with us rather than us initiating talks with them.” I replied that if he was not against negotiations in principle, what did it matter who initiated them? What mattered was what they achieved, not how they started. I told Walter that I thought we should move forward with negotiations and not worry about who knocked on the door first."  

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"A mother’s death causes a man to look back on and evaluate his own life. Her difficulties, her poverty, made me question once again whether I had taken the right path. That was always the conundrum: Had I made the right choice in putting the people’s welfare even before that of my own?"

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“We watched our children growing without our guidance,” I said at the wedding, “and when we did come out [of prison], my children said, ‘We thought we had a father and one day he’d come back. But to our dismay, our father came back and he left us alone because he has now become the father of the nation.’ ” To be the father of a nation is a great honor, but to be the father of a family is a greater joy. But it was a joy I had far too little of.

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