In Search of the New World (of Work)

So Cemex resolved to embrace the complexity of the marketplace rather than resist it -- to do business on the customer's terms, however zany those terms may be. In 1994, the company launched a project that it called Sincronización Dinámica de Operaciones: the dynamic synchronization of operations. The customer would now set the tempo. Cemex liberated its delivery trucks from their zone assignments and set them free to roam an entire city as part of one big pool. The company also outfitted its trucks with transmitters and receivers connected to a GPS (global-positioning satellite) system, thereby giving its computer precise, real-time data about the location, direction, and speed of every vehicle in its fleet. The computer triangulates this information against order destinations and mixing plants, all while taking traffic patterns into account.

But just as information is meaningless without action, so technology alone is powerless to create a new company culture -- a fact that millions of businesses in the United States and elsewhere still fail to grasp. "Technology," says Reséndez, "is the great enabler. But in the end, the central concern in this business is the customer call." Because customer-service quality corresponds to employees' education levels, Cemex enrolled its drivers -- who had an average of just six years of formal schooling -- in weekly secondary-education classes that spanned two years. Meanwhile, onerous work rules were gutted so that nothing would get in the way of filling orders on time. (Unions assented on the promise that greater efficiency would lead to higher pay.) "Instead of delivering concrete, our people are delivering a service," says Francisco Perez, operations manager at Cemex in Guadalajara. "They used to think of themselves as drivers. But anyone can deliver concrete. Now our people know that they're delivering a service that the competition cannot deliver."

Same-day service and free, unlimited order changes became standard operating procedure. The company introduced the kind of guarantee that Reséndez and Massey had been dreaming of since their trip to Memphis: If a load fails to arrive within 20 minutes of its scheduled delivery time, the buyer gets back 20 pesos per cubic meter -- "garantía 20x20," as the company's advertising puts it. That amounts to a discount of roughly 5%. With reliability exceeding 98% and with a vehicle efficiency that has increased by more than 30%, Cemex could afford to offer a far more generous guarantee. But a rebate of 20 pesos is enough to swamp Cemex's competition, while leaving room to offer an even steeper discount once the competition catches up -- if it ever does so.

Few companies have absorbed the culture of the marketplace as thoroughly as Cemex has done. "My main concern used to be equipment efficiency," says Perez. "Now my big concern is satisfying the customer." Says Reséndez: "We are selling a promise."

This Company Plays by its Book

Pat Anderson rolled into Dallas in the early 1970s with three daughters in her car, a cigarette in her mouth, and revolution in her heart. She had left behind a life in Oklahoma and had brought with her a drive to save the world. Now she was ready to begin graduate studies in clinical psychology. At age fortysomething, she was a bit of an anachronism. She hung antiwar posters in her home, wrote for the local underground press, and played the Animals and other 1960s rockers on her stereo. She also had a rough, skeptical side: In her new social circle in Dallas, she was known for her hatred of insincerity and for her brusque admonition to "cut the bullshit." What she did more than anything else was read -- serious fiction, literary trash, philosophy, humor. She always seemed to have a book in one hand and a cigarette in the other: the two calming vices in her life.

Before long, she hooked up with a fellow rabble-rouser named Ken Gjemre. At the peak of the antiwar movement, Gjemre had quit a successful career at Zale Corp., a jewelry-retailing giant, out of disgust with the corporate world. This was the era of the Santa Barbara oil spill and of the first Earth Day, and the environment had become a major cause of his. Another cause of his was First Amendment rights. One day, Gjemre told Anderson about his dream of starting a small business, one through which he might further those causes while also making a living. Together, they came up with an idea for a new company: It would be a recycling business, except that instead of recycling trash, they would recycle books. They envisioned a bookstore that would sell nothing but used books -- not antiquarian books or collector's items, but piles and piles of once-read textbooks, travel guides, and dime novels. They decided to make the business a joint venture. Anderson was especially enthusiastic: The prospect of "saving trees" while feeding her reading habit was more than she could pass up. So they leased 1,000 square feet inside an old Laundromat on Lovers Lane in Dallas and hung out their first sign: Half Price Books. People arrived with boxes and shopping bags overflowing with books. Some customers were tickled by the idea that books they had enjoyed might bring pleasure to someone else; others were delighted simply to be rid of the mildewy old things; all were grateful for the few cents on the dollar that Anderson and Gjemre paid.