University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
Driving Down Cost
Book

Driving Down Cost

How to Manage Costs - Intelligently

Andrew Wileman
Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2008
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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

Andrew Wileman provides a series of practical toolkits that help you achieve cuts in your cost structure to support your company’s strategic position. He also shows why cost slashing destroys brands and undermines future growth. His writing can be a bit colloquial and clunky at times, but it’s still very clear and easy to read. The book stays on point from beginning to end. Each chapter provides a list of the key ideas for each toolkit. getAbstract recommends this book to executives, CFOs, managers and others who are responsible for budgeting.

Summary

A Cost Manager Is Like a Personal Trainer

Cutting costs is more dramatic than cost managing. Intelligent cost management will improve your cost position without undermining the basis for your future growth. If you manage your costs well, the need for dramatic rounds of amputating portions of your company happen rarely, if ever.

Poor cost managers let their cost structures become unhealthy and act only when the choice is to cut or die. However, if you keep company bloat under control and make cost management a part of everyone’s job, your company will stay healthy, with the resources it needs to compete. A great cost manager is like a personal trainer for the company. The goal is to shed the fat while building muscle and enhancing the cardiovascular system.

Face it: Consumers don’t like to hear stories about corporate waste; they know these stories mean they’ll have to scrimp to buy what they need. Waste is a luxury no one can afford.

The “Toyota Paradox”

People used to say that you could make something cheaper or you could make it better, but you couldn’t do both. However, Toyota refuted this with its Toyota paradox. It focused on reducing defects...

About the Author

Andrew Wileman holds an M.B.A. from Harvard, and is a consultant with major consulting firms. He now consults on his own and writes columns for Management Today.

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