Book Review

The text of the first xerographic image, created in a makeshift laboratory in Astoria, Queens, by Mr. Chester Carlson, the inventor of xerography.

I finished reading ‘Prophets in the dark’ by David Kearns and David Nadler (Though Mr. Kearns is the core writer Nadler joins him in the end when they share some personal experience). The book is about how the Xerox (famous copier company) reinvented itself to beat the Japanese companies when Xerox was at its worst downfall.

Mr. Kearns who served as the CEO of Xerox from 1982 to 1990 starts the story from Mr. Chester Carlson, the inventor of the historic office invention, the photocopier. He continues to tell us about his life and how he ended up joining Xerox from IBM. And ofcourse, the remarkable history of the company itself.

The first machine Xerox introduced was 914. A massive success, though there had been enormous defects but it was a success nevertheless. The company grew at enormous pace. Various other successful managers were hired from different companies like Ford, IBM etc. And thousands of people were hired as worker, sales representatives and so on.

With the Ford men onboard a cultural and political difference started to grow in the company over the years. Xerox people felt they owned it, knew well what they are dealing with while the new management from Ford were the people who believed in numbers and statistics. They only knew the concept of how to grow.

Xerox encountered various sues, even from the government itself on its patent, that the company monopolize the copier business. IBM told Xerox whether to allow it or not they were going to make the copier and so did the Kodak. Xerox did win the sue against IBM but they finally ended up relaxing their patent because there was no way out. Although the copiers introduced by these companies were no better but customers were fed up of the jams, defects, customer supports etc from the Xerox end. And then the Japanese came and they were selling the machines lower then the cost Xerox spent to make these machines.

Once 90% of the copier market was captured by Xerox, now only remained at 12%. The company was going down and no one was willing to admit. After all we are the best, we are the pioneers. The mind set was arrogant.

It was obvious that company needed the Quality products to survive, but what is quality? No one understood (yes that is true, even often we don’t understand what quality really mean). It was mentioned in the meetings but never acted upon. And then external consultant was hired. Mr. Nadler.

Communication gaps between the company and the customer was at its worst height. Xerox was not making the products that a customer wanted. Communication gap within the company was huge. One of the interesting concepts Nadler introduced was external and internal customers. When the suppliers get the supplies from the warehouse, suppliers are the customers and so forth. Now is the customer satisfied? What are the requirements of the customer? Are they being fulfilled? The analysis showed that there were people in the company who didn’t had any customers, and they were asked to stop doing what they were doing. Similarly before any meeting two questions became essential. Who is the customer? What is the customer requirement? It turned out that half of the time there was no customer and since those meetings never needed.

It was certain that the change is required; the whole culture of the company needed to change, and quality throughout the company was needed and fast. More important, top management must not only agree but truly understand what kind of a change it will be and what really the quality is. Training was held for the top people and within some years it was planed that every employee will go through the same training. (Consider a company who have hundred thousand employees) and each employee going through a training twice. Notation of Learn it, Use it, Teach it and Inspect it was introduced. LUTI.

Several benchmarks were introduced with top companies and achieved. People were motivated, rewards were given. It wasn’t achieved in a day or a month or year but took a decade. Though the basic concept was understood even before. There weren’t only the good decisions, there were massive bad one’s too.

What makes the book actually interesting is, every detail Mr. Kearns provide about every problem faced, its background, history and the problem itself. What was intended solution and why? What was the thought process behind? And when it turned out not being the good decision the reasons why? Mr. Kearns admits several bad decisions he made, several learnings. Perhaps most common being ‘Not every manager you like is the perfect manager for the job.’ The book is an excellent read for the students and businessmen equally.