Book Review – “The Method Method”

Inspired by Nick Charney’s recent blog post, I thought I’d write quick book reviews of recent books and articles I’ve finished.

This week’s:
“The Method Method: Seven Obsessions that helped our start-up turn the industry around”

What is it about – The book is the story of the brand Method which is a consumer brand that offers organic cleaning and body goods. The brand is unique in that it is very design focused and has a very fun brand that focuses heavily on consumer. In about 10 years, it’s gone from 0 to $100M+ revenue

5 of my favorite themes from the book

1) Get people invested in helping create product – get input from day 1 from your custoemrs

2) Be the best at getting better – that should be the organization’s #1 goal – how can the organization continually improve every day and learn at faster rate than competitors

3) Good design is good business – integrate good design from beginning. It’s not separate than good business it’s integrated. Method proved this by spending 1/2 of original capital on the design of the soap bottle

4) Write for one person – in your marketing imagine you are writing for one person. It is much more compelling than writing broadly and impersonal

5) People want structure & process in order to innovate – as an organization Method needed to add structure and process over time in order to allow their employees to innovate. At beginning, they thought structure was bad but grew to understand it was essential to innovate