In Search of the New World (of Work)

In the realm of geography, the Age of Exploration ended long ago. In the realm of work, the Age of Exploration has hardly even begun -- nor is there any end in sight.

Beyond the well-traveled fields of business reporting, on which companies merge and split and on which CEOs rise and fall, men and women have been redefining work and success -- building new models of competition and developing new ways to find meaning amid the confusion of the marketplace.

Thomas Petzinger Jr. has been exploring this previously uncharted region of business innovation for several years now. In a column for the Wall Street Journal, he has been sending dispatches from "The Front Lines" of the new world of work, reporting not on the people who mandate change but on those who create it. And in a new book, he offers case studies that illuminate the pioneering efforts of people at companies of every possible type -- from mom-and-pop operations to big-name multinationals, from high-tech startups in industries that did not exist a decade ago to low-tech powerhouses in industries that seemed immune to change. Here's a look at how three companies are lighting out for new territory.

This Promise is Set in Concrete

Adopting the customer's point of view may be fine in banking, chip making, and medical care, but what if the customer is downright irrational? In a fast-changing world, sometimes even the customer doesn't know the customer's point of view. Consider the concrete business. Delivering concrete is a tough business anywhere, but imagine doing it in Mexico. The weather is wild, the traffic unpredictable. Labor disruptions erupt spontaneously, and government inspections target construction sites capriciously. Meanwhile, a load of concrete is never more than 90 minutes from spoiling in the rotating cylinder on the back of a truck.

Pandemonium -- swearing, screaming, occasional fisticuffs, the oft-told lie that the truck is "on its way" -- had long reigned at the central operations center of Cemex. In a second-floor office overlooking a lot full of trucks, dispatchers took orders for any of 8,000 grades of concrete and then forwarded those orders to a half-dozen regional mixing plants, each with its own large fleet of trucks. This complexity was exacerbated by the astonishing fact that more than half of all orders were changed by customers -- often repeatedly, often at the last minute.

Cemex, based in Monterrey but with operations that extend across Mexico, was an old company (it was founded in 1906) and a successful one (its annual revenues come to $3.7 billion). It had tried to train its customers to stick with their orders by imposing financial penalties for changes and by demanding longer lead times -- but such rules could not conquer the natural disarray of the marketplace. So Cemex could do no better than to promise delivery within a three-hour window.

Two internal consultants, Kenneth Massey and Homero Reséndez, studied the problem and concluded that customer chaos was an unalterable force. As they searched for coping measures, their thoughts turned to the miracle of Federal Express, another operation built entirely around the swift delivery of goods to any and all locations. In 1993, Massey, Reséndez, and their team paid a benchmarking visit to the FedEx hub in Memphis. They were awed by FedEx's stunning efficiency and by its brilliant use of information systems. But nothing dazzled them quite so much as the FedEx marketing guarantee: "It's on time, or it's on us." Applying the same offer to cement deliveries in Mexico seemed an impossible dream.

The Cemex team began to question the company's entire approach to its market. Rather than punishing customers with penalties or enforcing long lead times, perhaps Cemex should make last-minute changes routine. Such changes, after all, are part of the unwavering culture of the marketplace. Team members began to call this new approach "living with chaos." Then they scheduled another field trip, this one to the 911 dispatch center in Houston. The visitors sat rapt in a darkened room, transfixed by the utter poise with which dispatchers fielded calls reporting heart attacks, fires, and other emergencies. There always seemed to be just enough ambulances and just enough paramedics in just the right parts of town. That's when it hit the visitors from Mexico: Though individually unpredictable, emergencies occurred in sufficient number to allow a pattern to be discerned and planned for. "It was a revelation," says Raúl Prieto de la Fuente, a member of the Cemex team.