Book Summary Preview : Sacred Cows Make The Best Burgers

The Big Idea
In the new economy driven by change and spurred by opportunities coming from all directions, where competition is tough and customers are more sophisticated and demanding, it is imminent that companies and organizations take the step to remove its sacred cows. In business parlance, sacred cows refer to an outmoded belief, an assumption, practice, system or strategy that generally inhibits change and prevents responsiveness to new opportunities. Sacred cows are those who are afraid to abandon what once made them successful. Today’s organizations must make room for creative ideas and new thinking in order to grow. Innovativeness is crucial.

The authors Robert Kriegel and David Brandt relate that removing sacred cows requires preparing an organization and its people for change. The change-ready process include five stages: rounding up sacred cows, developing a change-ready environment, turning resistance into readiness, motivating people to change and developing the seven personal change-ready traits.

The Five Steps To Developing Change-Ready People and Organizations

The First Step: Rounding Up Sacred Cows

The sacred cow hunt includes challenging well-worn beliefs, assumptions and practices as well as identifying those that have outlived their usefulness. Critical to the step is seeking and ensuring the involvement of people in hunting down sacred cows and implementing change.

Who Hunts The Sacred Cows
The effective and successful cow hunter possesses the challenge everything attitude. This individual can be a high-level executive or rank and file worker or new employee not yet fully indoctrinated in the workplace culture thus bringing a fresh perspective.

How To Hunt
Begin the sacred cow hunt. The cow hunt is a first step to preparing employees to start accepting change. It is a technique to get employees psychologically ready for change and possible major organizational transformations.

Create an event around the sacred cow hunt. Every time an employee of Tractor Supply Stores identifies a sacred cow, bells get rung and cow hunters are heralded and toasted. Awards and cowbells are given to the best hunters. Cow images and accessories are openly displayed around the office. Merck Pharmaceutical conducts monthly sacred cow barbecues. Petroleum company William Pipe Line from Tulsa, Oklahoma provides a free hamburger lunch to the cow hunter along with a $10 gift certificate if the idea is “irresistabull” or a $50 certificate if it is “udderly” wonderful.

Create an organization of hunters. A company where people do their jobs while keeping an eye on outmoded ideas and practices is likely to become a powerful and creative change-ready organization able to reinvent itself before the need becomes pressing. The best hunters are people closest to the customer and value chain process. They know best about redundant, counterproductive and unnecessary work processes that deter serving the needs of the customers immediately. . .

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