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Play Nice But Win: A CEO's Journey from Founder to Leader (English Edition) Kindle Ausgabe
From Michael Dell, renowned founder and chief executive of one of America’s largest technology companies, the inside story of the battles that defined him as a leader
In 1984, soon-to-be college dropout Michael Dell hid signs of his fledgling PC business in the bathroom of his University of Texas dorm room. Almost 30 years later, at the pinnacle of his success as founder and leader of Dell Technologies, he found himself embroiled in a battle for his company’s survival. What he’d do next could ensure its legacy—or destroy it completely.
Play Nice But Win is a riveting account of the three battles waged for Dell Technologies: one to launch it, one to keep it, and one to transform it. For the first time, Dell reveals the highs and lows of the company's evolution amidst a rapidly changing industry—and his own, as he matured into the CEO it needed. With humor and humility, he recalls the mentors who showed him how to turn his passion into a business; the competitors who became friends, foes, or both; and the sharks that circled, looking for weakness. What emerges is the long-term vision underpinning his success: that technology is ultimately about people and their potential.
More than an honest portrait of a leader at a crossroads, Play Nice But Win is a survival story proving that while anyone with technological insight and entrepreneurial zeal might build something great—it takes a leader to build something that lasts.
- SpracheEnglisch
- HerausgeberPortfolio
- Erscheinungstermin5. Oktober 2021
- Dateigröße31.7 MB
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Pressestimmen
—The Economist
“In this super-candid book filled with revealing stories, Michael Dell shows how his development as a person was tightly intertwined with building the company he founded in hiscollege dorm room. It’s a fast-paced tale of launching a public company, taking it private, and then taking it public again, all while wrestling with colorful characters such as Carl Icahn. Dell provides a wealth of business insights but also something more important: how curiosity and good values are essential to success both in life and in business. It’s a lesson he learned from his strong parents and shares with his wife in the work of their foundation togive kids better opportunities. The result is a book that is exciting, insightful, and valuable.”
—Walter Isaacson, bestselling author of The Code Breaker
“Michael Dell takes you into the real world of building and transforming an empire, vividly describing conversations and deals with key players so you see the whole picture. It’s a great gift for those on a similar journey.”
—Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates and author of Principles: Life and Work
“Play Nice But Win is exactly right. Exceptional entrepreneurs like Michael Dell have changed the world under great pressure, but with great success. Michael tells you how to be successful and true to your values in this awe-inspiring narrative of what it takes.”
—Eric Schmidt, cofounder of Schmidt Futures and former CEO and chairman of Google
“Michael Dell is the rare leader who set his company on a successful long-term direction by balancing innovative strategy with consistent values. In Play Nice But Win, he reminds us that courage and conviction are the key to transformative change in any organization.”
—Indra Nooyi, former chairman and CEO of PepsiCo and author of My Life in Full
“Many people have great business ideas. Entrepreneurs see them through. That’s the story of Michael Dell, whose book takes us on a riveting journey from the dorm room at the University of Texas to the boardroom of one of the world’s largest tech companies. It’s a tale of vision and perseverance every aspiring entrepreneur should read.”
—Sir Richard Branson
“This is Dell Direct. With insightful frankness and humor, Michael Dell tells his story, that of his iconic company and the grit required to compete in the ever-growing technology industry.This is a book for entrepreneurs, leaders, and dreamers.”
—Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft
“Michael Dell’s journey is part of the historic fabric of American business. His story of multiple transformations through the decades has insights for leaders at every stage, from entrepreneur to CEO.”
—Howard Schultz, cofounder of the Schultz Family Foundation, former chairman and CEO of Starbucks
“With rare candor and insight, Michael shares his incredible journey as founder and CEO of one of the most iconic and admired tech companies. It’s the unvarnished story of one of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs, a visionary with unparalleled determination and a commitment to leading with compassion and integrity.”
—Marc Benioff, chair and CEO of Salesforce
“As Michael Dell likes to say, life is about taking a punch, falling down, getting back up, and fighting again. Play Nice But Win is as much a story about resilience as it is about business. Michael is candid about the setbacks and challenges he’s faced in his life and career. The lessons he’s learned along the way are important for everyone who aspires to lead.”
—Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and author of Lean In and Option B
“Play Nice But Win is an autobiographical thriller, and Michael Dell is the gangster protagonist—never looking for a fight, but relishing every brawl once he’s in it. By outwitting tyrants, takeovers, and dead ends, Michael relentlessly protects, transforms, and expands the product he tinkered with as a teenager into the multinational company Dell is today. Michael consistently wins not by exposing loopholes but always by making advantage of the rules. Play Nice But Win is a magic trick, and one hell of a caped crusader coup.”
—Matthew McConaughey, Academy Award winner, bestselling author of Greenlights
“Play Nice But Win belongs on the list of great digital-age memoirs. The quietest of the entrepreneurs who created the modern computer business finally tells his story.”
—Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History
“This is the saga of how one of the great founders of our time launched his company, grew it, got it back, and rejuvenated it. Michael Dell’s entrepreneurial spirit is infectious, and his behind-the-scenes stories are full of important lessons about leadership, collaboration, competition, and innovation.”
—Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of the TED podcast WorkLife
“In his new book, Play Nice But Win, Michael Dell provides a powerful portrait of his life—the early years, the obstacles and challenges, the successes and triumphs. Thoughtful and revealing, it shares an inside look at what it takes to become a good leader—and more important, a good human being.”
—Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase
“This book is an incredible window into what it’s like to be in a founder’s shoes, and the difficult work of growing a company. Michael Dell is not only an innovator, but a leader, and in Play Nice But Win he shows what it really takes to build the future.”
—Marc Andreessen, cofounder of Netscape and Andreessen Horowitz
“Michael walks you through every step of his journey, from starting a company in his college dorm to pulling off the largest all-tech acquisition in history. Anyone who’s interested in business at any level can learn from the insights in this book.”
—Bill Gates
“Fast-paced and humorously told… Business news nuts who love swashbuckling stories will feel right at home.”
—Publishers Weekly
“…a candid second memoir… a lively chapter in computer history."
—Kirkus
“In Play Nice But Win, the taciturn Texan entrepreneur finally has his say. It is worth going along for the ride . . . a good reminder that all business really is personal.”
—Financial Times
“… a refreshingly candid account of Dell's success in the computer industry, and how his company has remained at the top of the business world.”
—Booklist, a publication of the American Library Association
“… a candid memoir from one of the most irrepressible entrepreneurs of the computer age.”
—Alan Murray, Fortune
“A quick and compelling read . . . a glimpse inside one of the era’s great entrepreneurial minds . . . Dell still wanted to play the game, and his enthusiasm for it is infectious.”
—Porchlight, Staff Pick
Über die Autorenschaft und weitere Mitwirkende
Leseprobe. Abdruck erfolgt mit freundlicher Genehmigung der Rechteinhaber. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.
1
Headwinds
I was sitting at Carl Icahn's dining room table with Icahn and his wife, eating Mrs. Icahn's meat loaf.
It was a lovely spring evening-Wednesday, May 29, 2013-and Carl Icahn was trying to take my company away from me.
It was a truly surreal moment, in so many ways.
That May evening was almost the precise midpoint in a nine-month drama in which the personal computer company I started in my freshman dorm room at the University of Texas in 1984, the company with my name on it, tilted E and all, almost slipped away from me-and then changed forever, changing me along with it.
I'd like to tell you that story, and a couple of other ones besides.
The year 2005 dawned bright with promise for Dell Inc. Apart from the blip of the dot-com bust five years earlier-a correction that affected not just us but tech companies across the board-Dell had enjoyed a pretty uninterrupted run of growth in revenue and profits and cash flow for two decades. In January 2005 our share of PCs sold stood at a robust 18.2 percent. In February Fortune named us the most admired company in America. Dell, they wrote, was Òthriving in an industry that may technically qualify as being in the poorest state in the Union. Its profits in this margin-squeezed business soared 15 percent in 2004, a feat that Dell makes look boringly routine. And now itÕs the first PC maker to hold the rank of AmericaÕs Most Admired since the original ÔPCÕ maker, IBM, logged off in 1986.Ó
By September, though, things had begun to change. A lot. Though our profits rose 28 percent in the second quarter, total revenue was several hundred million dollars short of projections. We were, The New York Times reported, "wrestling with the same question facing other mature technology companies that ranked among the highest fliers of the 1990s: How to increase revenues when it is already so big?" Compounding the problem was the fact that personal computers and laptops, which accounted for roughly 60 percent of our sales, were no longer the rich profit center they used to be. As prices had dropped over the course of the year, we'd had to sell that many more PCs just to keep up with the previous year's revenue.
Interviewed by the Times, our CEO Kevin Rollins blamed himself for the shortfall. "Frankly," he said, "we executed poorly on managing overall selling prices"-especially on machines sold to consumers.
Yes, you read that correctly; it wasn't a typographical error. Kevin Rollins, not I, was CEO of Dell Inc. that fall. I'd stepped aside from the position in July 2004 and Kevin had taken over-though taken over isn't exactly the right way to put it. I remained chairman, and the two of us continued to run the company together as we had for a decade; not much really changed except for our titles.
And so if there was blame to be laid for that revenue loss, I shared it. But it quickly became apparent in late 2005 that the underperformance wasn't an anomaly: Dell was beginning to hit serious headwinds. For one thing, our competitors were getting smarter. Companies like Hewlett-Packard, Acer, and Lenovo, companies we'd always soundly defeated with our build-to-order model, had gone back into their cave and figured out how to duplicate many of our supply chain innovations. Meanwhile, build-to-order itself, so effective at addressing the many combinations and permutations of desktop computers, lost its advantage as the industry shifted from desktops to less easily customized notebooks. Customers were starting to focus more on services and solutions as value transitioned from the fundamental client product, the PC and related peripherals, to software, servers, and the data center.
It took us a little bit longer than we would have liked to figure all this out.
And then there was a Dell plus that was subtly turning into a minus: for a few years we'd been prioritizing profit over growth and share, and a company's success is always a balance between those three. Our profits were strong in the 2000s, but now our share was eroding. And that can be a slippery slope.
We needed to build new capabilities, we needed to invest in new areas, and we needed to move fast.
In 2007 I returned as CEO-both a symbolic move and a practical one-and we embarked upon a major merger and acquisitions initiative, starting with the purchase of the data storage company EqualLogic, for $1.4 billion. The financial crisis of 2008 threw a temporary wrench into our plans, but the following year we restarted the program by buying Perot Systems (for $3.9 billion), and in 2010 we really went on a roll, acquiring storage, systems management, cloud, and software companies such as Compellent, Boomi, Exanet, InSite One, KACE, Ocarina Networks, and Scalent.
In 2011, to round out our enterprise capabilities, we bought Secureworks, RNA Networks, and Force10 Networks. And in 2012 we made still more key acquisitions in software and security, including Quest Software, SonicWALL, and Credant Technologies. For fiscal year 2012, Dell achieved its highest-ever revenue, earnings, operating income, cash flow, and earnings per share.
Maybe it was the calm before the storm.
But in the meantime, all was not well at Dell. We'd tried to enter the smartphone and tablet markets, without success. We'd even come up with what was known at the time as a "phablet"-a five-inch Android device called the Streak. It didn't exactly streak lightning across the sky. (For one thing, most of the profit went to Google.)
By 2012 our PC sales had fallen by double digits, and our share had continued to erode-by year-end, with the heavy weight of Windows 8's failure dragging us down, it had dropped to 10.5 percent-and now profit was declining as well. Our market capitalization had fallen below $20 billion.
In late 2012 our share price would sink almost to penny-stock territory: less than $9, a plummet from the $15-to-$17 levels it had seen in 2009 through 2011. The conventional wisdom, shouted through a thousand megaphones on the internet as well as on CNBC and other media outlets, was that the PC was doomed, and that therefore Dell was pretty much doomed too.
Our shareholders were not happy, myself included.
Despite our spectacular success over the years-anyone who'd bought Dell shares back at the beginning and held on to them had earned 13,500 percent on their investment, twenty-seven times greater than the 500 percent return on the S&P 500 during the same period-our stockholders were worried about the company's future. Still I had the full support of our shareholders, who in July 2012 reelected me to serve as CEO and chairman of Dell with over 96 percent of the vote.
And I was trying to reassure them. "We're really not a PC company anymore," I told Fortune editor in chief Andy Serwer in July 2012, at Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen. But Andy was a tough sell. "Is it really the case that you're not a PC company now or that you don't want to be a PC company in the future?" he asked me.
I reminded him that in the last five years we'd made a concerted shift in our business, toward end-to-end IT solutions: a complete set
of capabilities for customers, from their data centers to their client systems to security, software systems management, storage, servers, and networking.
I told Andy that Dell was really in four businesses now.
First came the client business, which was itself transforming with all that was going on in mobility and client virtualization-which in turn brought new needs in terms of security.
Next came the enterprise data center. I reminded Andy that we'd built a...
Produktinformation
- ASIN : B08VWFW56N
- Herausgeber : Portfolio (5. Oktober 2021)
- Sprache : Englisch
- Dateigröße : 31.7 MB
- Text-to-Speech (Vorlesemodus) : Aktiviert
- Screenreader : Unterstützt
- Verbesserter Schriftsatz : Aktiviert
- X-Ray : Aktiviert
- Word Wise : Aktiviert
- Seitenzahl der Print-Ausgabe : 336 Seiten
- ISBN-Quelle für Seitenzahl : 0593087747
- Amazon Bestseller-Rang: Nr. 338.891 in Kindle-Shop (Siehe Top 100 in Kindle-Shop)
- Nr. 165 in Biografien von Unternehmern (englischsprachig)
- Nr. 611 in Führung von Unternehmen (englischsprachig)
- Nr. 1.127 in Memoiren (englischsprachig)
- Kundenrezensionen:
Informationen zum Autor
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A must read for those who lead or aspire to lead.
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- Bewertet in Deutschland am 1. November 2021A detailed but easy to read account of some of the bravest and most audacious transactions in tech history. This brilliantly written book gives you a ringside seat.
5,0 von 5 SternenA detailed but easy to read account of some of the bravest and most audacious transactions in tech history. This brilliantly written book gives you a ringside seat.A must read for those who lead or aspire to lead.
Bewertet in Deutschland am 1. November 2021
Bilder in dieser Rezension
Spitzenrezensionen aus anderen Ländern
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AshBewertet in den USA am25. Dezember 2024
5,0 von 5 Sternen Inspiring and Motivating
Dell’s story with all the ups and downs but never giving up is inspiring. The contributions to the society were incredible to learn about. Great read…
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Thayssa CorrêaBewertet in Brasilien am 17. März 2024
5,0 von 5 Sternen Ótimo Produto
Ótimo produto. Livro em ótimo estado e muito bonito. Chegou certinho.
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little book loverBewertet in Mexiko am 11. Januar 2022
3,0 von 5 Sternen Solid book design and content, Poor printing and low quality paper
Book it’s great, really
Very well organized so the reader gets entertained and enjoys the chapters
You can get fascinated by his early start as entrepreneur or by the financial and corporate decisions of a multibillion company
Amazon really needs to step up their quality printing, book had bad page cuts and the paper for some reason it’s too sensitive to humidity and pages end up wavy. Hard cover version should use better quality paper
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nullBewertet in Kanada am 15. Oktober 2021
5,0 von 5 Sternen Incredible!
An incredible story from an incredible man. The financial engineering that made Dell what it is today is remarkable. This story will be referenced in business school texts for generations.
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cegi 1967Bewertet in Italien am 25. September 2022
5,0 von 5 Sternen Excellent autobiography
It flows beautifully. Format Is originale, mixing current and old times until the two merge into the inevitabile, triumphant conclusion. Excellent read