Review: Play Nice But Win: A Ceo's Journey from Founder to Leader

Play Nice But Win: A Ceo's Journey from Founder to Leader by Michael Dell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

At the beginning of my career, I was charged with helping to decide which PCs my company would buy. I worked for a top oil company, so we bought a lot of PCs, and we chose PCs Limited. This was the early name of Dell Computers. Dell was a couple years younger than I was, so I always wanted to know how he started and grew his company. This book tells that story. He starts his story earlier, regaling the reader with his money making prowess in high school before selling computers. His early business stories are often about risks his company faced, like growing need for warehouse and factory space, personnel issues, money issues, and the like. Quite interesting to this buyer, and had I known some of these things were happening with the company, I wouldn’t have been so positive on the company early on.

I was intrigued by Dell stock early on. I remember having bought some shares in the early 90s, then asking a wiser co-worker what to do when they went up 30% in a couple of weeks. His suggestion – don’t be a pig, sell. I did. About 5 years later, at that co-worker’s retirement party, I told the story that I followed his advice and earned enough to buy a small desktop PC. But had I kept the shares for 5 years, I could have bought my house. Dell touches on the stock’s rise by mentioning his employees creating and wearing t-shirts that said “Dellionaires”. I toured Dell’s laptop factory and saw line workers wearing said shirts in the mid 90s.

I especially enjoyed learning the behind-the-scenes anecdotes about Dell’s various governance and financial engineering passes, taking the company private and buying EMC. I owned the tracking stock and read the various financial statements, and wondered at the time how Dell could engineer more money for his shareholders with each change. And it seems he did. This fills in some of the details missing from those financial statements. It’s not a riveting story, but I found it of interest.

I have read other reviewers who point out that there isn’t much reflection or growth described here. That is true. This is more like listening to Dell tell stories, mostly bragging. If you are in the mood for this, it’s pretty interesting.


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