The 10 Lives of George Stalk

The book, a controversial reaction to the glut of squishy, culturally focused business books that have dominated the last decade, is about gaining an unassailable advantage over rivals. Written in a clear, no-nonsense style, it lists six strategies ranging from "unleash massive and overwhelming force" to "threaten your competitor's profit sanctuaries" to "entice your competitor into retreat." Each is illustrated with corporate examples, from the obvious (Toyota and Southwest Airlines) to the obscure (Wausau Paper and Federal-Mogul). The lesson is simple and harsh: Hardball players do what it takes to win.

Some people have interpreted Hardball as a business version of America's "go it alone" political strategy in the world, or as a total rejection of the idea that a company's culture and people are an important part of its edge. Although neither is true, BCG, fearing a political storm, altered some of Hardball's chapter titles to make them sound less aggressive. But the changes didn't do much to soothe those who think business should be a kinder, gentler pursuit and that Stalk's testosterone-fueled emphasis on crushing your competitor is a Stone Age throwback. "[Stalk and Lachenauer] are on a brutal, macho trip," wrote one reviewer for the Financial Times.

Although Hardball was in the works before Stalk's illness, its publication serves another purpose, too. It's a powerful announcement that Stalk is back -- and that he's as focused and as serious as ever. "When I got out of the hospital, I had less interest in finding a middle ground," he says. And Hardball is hardly the work of a man softened by his brush with mortality. "You want to be home by 5 p.m.? You want to clip coupons? You want to retire before China becomes a problem for your business?" Stalk writes. "Nuh-uh. To play hardball, you and your organization have to go to the 'heart of the matter' and stay there. You have to live by the rock face. You have to be willing to put your competitors through pain. You have to have a high energy level and the ability to sustain it."

The phone call came from BCG's Washington office, asking Stalk to go to London and give a speech in place of a U.S. Air Force general who had canceled. But first he had to meet the general at Andrews Air Force Base and pass muster. "We found the study you did for us years ago," said the general, voice full of disgust. He pushed it across the table. "I think this is a piece of crap." Stalk defended himself. "Of course I expected you to say this was a piece of crap," he said, "because you didn't have the guts to implement it."

Standing up to the general was, it turned out, the right move: He loved this answer and gave Stalk the go-ahead to make the speech. To get him there on time, the Air Force sent him an F-16. Stalk landed just in time to see the horrible aftermath of that nuclear war between Japan and England.

The vision of nuclear hell, like many of Stalk's hallucinations, has some basis in reality. An Air Force brat who moved 27 times as a child, Stalk actually watched the detonation of atomic bombs in Nevada as an 8-year-old. "My mother would get us up, and we'd look out of the motel window and watch the clouds go up," he says.

Stalk studied engineering at Michigan, then married C. Henri, whom he'd met during a summer working in Washington, and completed a master's at MIT. After graduating, he went to work as a consultant for the Air Force and then at Exxon. Along the way, he became interested not just in how a product worked but in how it could give a company a decisive advantage. He decided to go to Harvard Business School, mostly because it had a reputation for being a boot camp. "This place sounded like pure hell," he remembers with masochistic relish.

Stalk survived HBS, graduating in 1978, and had planned to join a high-tech startup until he heard about BCG, the new- fangled consultancy with a tough reputation and a scientific approach to management. Stalk quickly became a star at figuring out a competitor's costs, but got pigeonholed as a cost expert and planned to quit. Instead, someone suggested he try a foreign office. Stalk chose Japan, something of a backwater at the time.

Shortly after Stalk arrived in 1979, Bruce Henderson, BCG's founder, posed a challenge: Why are the Japanese able to achieve higher levels of productivity and quality with smaller, more-capital-intensive factories? Because fat, happy American companies still worshipped the idea of scale, they didn't really understand the power of the Japanese factory, and Stalk had trouble getting them to fund his research. Instead, he did a series of stealth projects for such existing clients as Clark Equipment and John Deere, spending months at a time inside the factories of their joint-venture partners in Asia. He reached the radical conclusion that while quality and cost were important, time itself -- or the ability to organize a factory or a business so as to get more done in less time -- was the killer app. Stalk named the theory "time-based competition" and resolved to bring this just-in-time manufacturing system back home.