Why 40 Percent of Your Business Is Unprofitable and How to Fix It
November 1, 2010
The claim made by the author, a Senior Lecturer at MIT, wasn't gleaned from a study; rather, it comes from his own experience as a consultant, and the examples and suggestions in his first book are aimed squarely at managers. Byrnes finds unprofitability almost everywhere—in accounts, order lines, vendors, sales channels, and products–and blames corporations for focusing insufficient resources on the bottom line. Drawing from a monthly column he wrote for a Harvard Business School e-newsletter in the early 2000s, Byrnes offers managers tips on reestablishing a healthy profit, such as creating a profitability database, modeling a customer, creating an action plan, and institutionalizing profit mapping. Thirty-six chapters arranged in four sections (thinking, selling, operating, leading), and dozens of boxed "things to think about" and "lessons for managers" cover profit from the supply chain to the customer. While many of the best-known companies Byrnes references have a whiff of old news about them (Walmart, Dell, GE), case studies of lesser-knowns like Nalco Chemical and SKF Bearings may offer the dedicated reader more to take away.