(FORTUNE Magazine) – Now that a wholesale embrace of reengineering, teamwork, and empowerment threatens to reduce American companies to a state of competitive parity, who will break out of the pack in the coming years? "Masters of entrepreneurial judo," says Richard D'Aveni, a professor of business strategy at Dartmouth's Amos Tuck School-maverick men and women whose vision is different from everyone else's. "This is not an age of castles, moats, and armor, where people can sustain a competitive advantage for very long," says D'Aveni. "This is an age that calls for cunning, speed, and enterprise."

Case in point: When a huge explosion destroyed one of Jamaica's power plants last June, leaving the island in partial darkness, local authorities desperately sought someone who could turn the lights back on for the Christmas tourist season. Normally, such a job would take up to 22 months and cost as much as $40 million, $15 million more than Jamaica was willing to pay. Eight companies submitted bids. Only one, CNF Constructors in Meriden, Connecticut, agreed to meet Jamaica's terms. Says CNF vice president Frank Loscavio, 45, who masterminded the initiative: "We knew we had to deliver come hell or high water."

On cue, the heavens opened up. Rain fell steadily for two months. "Our boots never dried out," says project manager Eric Whitehouse. For several weeks Jamaica was unable to supply the crew with telephone lines, and supervisors had to use their cars as makeshift offices until trailers arrived from the U.S. But CNF pressed on, working around the clock to pour the plant's foundation. On December 14, the switch was thrown.

Loscavio met his deadline by putting a maverick notion to work. He calls it the just-say-yes approach: "The truth is, if you don't say you can do a job, someone else in the world will, and you'll be left behind." To earn a profit in Jamaica, CNF had to turn the pricing structure of the construction business on its head. Usually, companies figure out their costs, tack on a profit, and submit a bid they hope will undercut everyone else. Instead, Loscavio worked backward from what Jamaica was able to pay. He determined that if CNF leased--rather than bought--the gas turbines it would need, the company could build the plant, operate it, and sell Jamaica the power at a profit.

No blueprints exist for maverick management. Nor can consultants teach it. By its very nature, maverick thinking is off the diagonal, can't be premeditated, and defies conventional wisdom. Empowerment? Not at C.R. England, a refrigerated trucking company run by five Mormon brothers. Its 2,200 employees are micromanaged by a fanatical system that tracks hundreds of productivity, quality, and satisfaction scores on a weekly basis. Teamwork? Not necessarily. The brilliance of mavericks is evident in an ability to strike out on their own, not in their collaborative skills. Says D'Aveni: "Teams are great at implementing ideas, not at generating them."

Though maverick ideas sometimes have a familiar ring, maverick managers stand apart by taking notions like a flexible workplace or open-book management to unprecedented extremes. Ricardo Semler's Brazilian manufacturing company Semco, for example, is so loosely strung that his brand of enlightened capitalism could easily be mistaken for anarchy. At Missouri's Springfield Remanufacturing Co., CEO Jack Stack not only opens the books to every employee but gives them a lot of time on the job to learn what the numbers actually mean.

Great mavericks don't all think alike; indeed, their ideas can be diametrically opposed at times. But they do share an ability to stun the competition with their own personal brand of can-doism. Unconventional leaders can be irritating, threatening, and disruptive for employees and competitors alike. But they're exactly what's called for at a time when all leads are only temporary. Says Mark Hochman of Rath & Strong consulting group in Lexington, Massachusetts: "Mavericks are no longer oddities; they're necessities."

BARING THE BOOKS

Crisis can smoke out a maverick. In 1980, SRC, an engine remanufacturing subsidiary of what was then International Harvester, was close to conking out because of a crippling, 172-day strike at the parent company. Wages hadn't budged in two years, and layoffs loomed. Jack Stack, a plant manager at Harvester, organized a group of investors to take SRC private in a $9 million buyout. "The first time we passed the hat, we collected $67,000," says Stack. "I said, 'Great, we're only $8.9 million short.' When we passed the hat a second time, we came up with $2,000 less. Someone's spouse thought the whole thing was a terrible idea." Stack approached more than 50 financial institutions before BancAmerica Commercial Corp. finally agreed to fund one of the most highly leveraged buyouts ever attempted: 89 parts debt to one part equity.

At the end of its first fiscal year, in 1984, the company had lost $61,000 on sales of $16 million. "I felt the only way to turn things around was to get people to think like owners," says Stack, 46. Handing over company stock, a fairly conventional notion today, wasn't enough. "I knew I had to go further," says Stack. "I needed to teach anyone who moved a broom or operated a grinder everything the bank lender knew. That way they could really understand how every nickel saved could make a difference."

Factory workers talking liquidity rates and overhead absorption? "At first it wasn't easy for everyone to understand the numbers," concedes machinist Craig Highbarger, 32. "But we've been over and over and over the different figures enough times that now, if you hand any one of us an income statement and leave out a few numbers, we can fill them in." Last year alone, SRC spent $300,000 on financial training, six times what it spent on upgrading production skills.

Each week the company shuts down the machines for half an hour while its 800 employees break into small groups to study the latest financial statements. The workers have more than a passing curiosity in the numbers: Last year SRC distributed $1.4 million in bonuses pegged to how each division performed against line items like profit before taxes. Says Highbarger: "We know that rebuilding a No. 466 crankshaft is worth $17.60 an hour toward paying for the electricity or the scheduling and purchasing departments. Yesterday we worked fast enough to pay for an extra $170 in overhead. That kind of effort goes right into our bonus."

Quick. This is a test: How much do you cost your company every time you print out a document or turn on your light? SRC employees worry about details like that. Says custodian Charles Serls, 50, whose bonus last year was $1,500: "I used to put a $4 can of Lysol in every toilet stall in the plant. But I knew that was a waste of money. Now I just come around a few times a day and spray all the bathrooms." Highbarger economizes by stretching out the life of his grinder. And when his supervisor asked the machinists in his division whether he should fill two openings or cover the extra work with overtime, they opted to work longer hours rather than spend money--their money--on training new employees.

Open-book management has paid off for Stack. In an industry with millimeter-size margins, SRC earned 6% pretax last year on sales of $100 million. Stack has also built a lucrative side business spreading the gospel. His book that tells the tale, The Great Game of Business, has sold 55,000 copies. Representatives of 1,600 companies, including Allstate Insurance, Shell Oil, and Southwest Airlines, have visited SRC or participated in Stack's two-day seminars. In December, Stack flew to Zambia, which wants to privatize its mining industry. His assignment is to devise a plan that will awaken the entrepreneurial spirit of 55,000 mineworkers.

SPACE FOR DREAMS

Next time you hold a strategy session, try one of Geraldine Laybourne's tricks: Hand out some Gak. One of the best-selling products of Nickelodeon, the children's television network that Laybourne runs, Gak is postmodern Play-Doh, a squooshy, stretchy, nonthreatening incarnation of the thing that rampaged through the streets in the Fifties horror movie The Blob. Says Laybourne: "You'd be surprised how relaxing it is to manipulate the stuff. People listen better and start sharing ideas."

Over the past 15 years, Laybourne, 47, has turned a fledgling operation of five into a business that employs 300 people, drew an estimated $330 million in net revenues last year, and reaches 60 million homes with programs like Rugrats, Weinerville, and Clarissa Explains It All. She won over her youthful viewers--who like variety as much as their parents do--by generating a constant flow of original programming.

Laybourne powers her creativity factory with one maverick idea after another. Her latest and most literal attempt to break out of the box was to transform four stories of the midtown Manhattan building that Nickelodeon shares with its parent company, Viacom. "I'm one of those sick executives who abolished the corner office to create a more egalitarian space," she says. In typical fashion, Laybourne gave the idea a fifth dimension. She created a working environment that could make poets of automatons. Best grab a road map to get from one end of the floor to the other: Go straight, and you'll bump into a wall. Says Laybourne: "I'm a spatial dyslexic. I'm always taking detours, which probably makes me a good producer of children's television."

Function, not beauty, was Laybourne's architectural objective: She wanted to jog the mind more than please the eye. Offices are oblong, oval, and pinwheel shaped. Some walls even list this way and that. Says executive vice president Anne Kreamer: "When things operate on planes and grids, invention is squelched." A three-story pyramid--actually a stack of conference rooms--pierces the space like a building within a building. Ten enclosed offices are reserved for those who want to escape the open space. Floor tiles look like the black-flecked notebooks you used in second grade. Corridors have creative surfaces of chalkboard or cork. If genius strikes on the way to the bathroom, don't risk losing the thought. Grab some chalk and start scribbling.

Of course, Laybourne's mind-bending techniques go beyond the games she plays with space. "Her trademark is to throw a problem at you, share a lot of information, and demand your contribution," says Herb Scannell, 38, executive vice president at Nickelodeon. "You want to perform for her, and I feel I can be pretty damn special because of her."

FROM FEAR TO FREEDOM

When at age 21 Ricardo Semler took over the family business from his father, Semco looked much like any other old-line Brazilian company. Fear was the governing principle. Guards patrolled the factory floor, timed people's trips to the bathroom, and frisked workers as they left the plant. Anyone unlucky enough to break a piece of equipment would replace it out of his own pocket.

At first the young Semler carried on the autocratic ethic, working a relentless schedule. But the pressure was literally killing him. One day, while visiting a pump factory in upstate New York, he collapsed on the shop floor. The doctor pronounced him basically healthy but more stressed out than any 25-year-old he had ever seen. After that experience, Semler resolved to remake his company into "a true democracy, a place run on trust and freedom, not fear."

He wasn't kidding. Semco employees truly run their own company. They wear what they want, choose their own bosses, and come and go as they please. A third of them actually set their own salaries, with one crucial hitch. They have to reapply for their jobs every six months. Production workers evaluate their higher-ups once a year and post the scores. If a manager's grade is consistently low, he or she steps down. "When I describe Semco to other business people, they laugh," says Semler. "'What do you do?' they ask. 'Make beads?' And I say, 'No, among other things we make rocket-fuel-propellant mixers for satellites.'"

Semler, 35, shares his wealth by regularly distributing a gargantuan 23% of profits to employees; on last year's $30 million in revenues, that amounted to $278,000 for the troops. He also shares his title. Six people, including a woman, rotate as CEO, each putting in six-month stints. Even though Semler's family still owns the company, his vote carries no more weight than anyone else's. Says Joao Vendramin, who runs the durable goods division and is one of the rotating CEOs: "Ricardo will say, 'If you want to know my opinion, I can give it to you now or later. But it's just another opinion.' "

Senior managers at Semco receive the same kinds of upward evaluations as lower-level executives. Semler gets good--but not great--marks that average around 80. "People complain that I cause too much havoc and don't intervene enough in times of crisis," says Semler. "But the day I intervene is the day I condemn this entire system. I grit my teeth a lot. And I watch while they sometimes elect managers I would never want to work for. But I trust my employees. They're looking for success as strongly as I am."

A wholesale rejection of his Harvard business school training? Not at all, says Semler. A stickler for productivity, he relies on the market to police both his employees and his own far-out ideas. The market definitely approves. In a country that barely blinks at 3,000% inflation, mere survival is a feat. But Semco has done much better than that with its hodgepodge of industrial pumps, mixers, propellers, and other products. In 1979, Semler's first year in charge, sales per employee were $10,800, about half the Brazilian industry average; today they are $135,000 per employee, more than four times the average figure for Semco's competitors.

Despite his current success, Semler had a difficult time early on dealing with what is perhaps a maverick's greatest challenge: winning the support of employees. Semler fired many of the old guard, but the purge didn't rid the company of every last skeptic. "I didn't want to give up control," admits Henrique Pinto, who left Semco in 1989 for a top position at another Brazilian manufacturing company. Today Semco is powered by zealous employees and gets 1,000 applications for every job opening. Mobil, IBM, and hundreds of other U.S. companies have made the pilgrimage to Sao Paulo to witness the operation firsthand, and Semler's book, entitled--what else?--Maverick, has sold over a million copies.

Container Industries in Denver is among the companies that have tried to remake themselves in Semco's image. Says founder Noel Ginsburg: "I had a general manager who was a real Caesar. The culture was very distasteful to me." After meeting Semler at a Harvard management seminar in 1988, he went home with a pocketful of plans. He flattened his company from six layers to three, passed out copies of all the financials, and created a profit-sharing pool of 10% after taxes for all employees. Since then, annual sales have more than doubled, to $14 million, and the money-losing company has become profitable.

Long a lab for creative management, Semco is ever evolving. The latest iteration of that spirit is the 50 or so satellite companies that have sprung up on the premises. Some are managed by former employees who lease Semco equipment and sell their products only to outsiders; others are run by people who work part-time for Semco and part-time for themselves. "This system sounds chaotic, can be frustrating, and is in some ways uncontrollable," says Semler. "It requires daily leaps of faith. It has destroyed any semblance of corporate security. And for the three years it's been in place, it has worked very well."

MEASURE IT TO MANAGE IT

If Semco is management's answer to 2001, C.R. England is 1984 all the way. Employees of this long-haul refrigerated trucking company in Salt Lake City have had to adapt to a world that's anything but loose. Strict centralized control is maintained by a computerized system that monitors roughly 500 procedures a week, everything from arrival times (a late shipment, according to headquarters, is anything that arrives less than 15 minutes early), to billing accuracy, to how well a trucker feels he is treated by the company's repair shop. Says vice president for technology Stephen Glines: "We want to run this place like the cockpit of a jetliner, where you have hundreds of different instruments before you at all times and know exactly where you are."

Do you cringe at the idea of your annual performance review? At this family-owned company, feedback is force-fed weekly. Every trucker, manager, and back-office worker receives a grade from A to F, based on computerized data linked to the individual's performance. Nothing is overlooked: from the number of minutes it takes to wash a truck, to the number of days it takes to complete a bill, to how well phone operators treat their customers.

And how do folks out there on the open road feel about all this throttling? Says Glines: "I don't think anyone likes to be this closely monitored. But most people start using the information as a learning tool." High marks are important to C.R. England employees because the company ties bonuses and extra vacation days to performance targets. Truckers, for instance, can earn up to $9,000 a year extra if they meet their safety and fuel consumption goals. Surprisingly, C.R. England's turnover dropped when it began its maniacal controls--from over 100% a year, which is consistent with the industry average, to about 75% a year.

A crisis catapulted this third-generation family team into action. Says CEO Dan England, 47: "In 1985 we were losing money. Prospects for the future did not look good." He and his family decided to pour $12 million into satellites and other computerized technology to get control of their unwieldy business. Says England: "Our view was, if we could measure it, we could manage it." Indeed. Now among the top five companies in its industry, C.R. England had revenues of $190 million last year, up from $25 million a decade ago; profit before taxes and interest was over $12 million. Says William Davidson, head of Mesa Research, a consulting firm in Redondo Beach, California: "I don't see anyone within leagues of where they are. C.R. England captures information on everything and recycles it back through the engine to improve performance." IN THE PITS

Obsessive self-monitoring is only one way to knock out the competition. Another is to look far afield and model oneself after the very best in the world, regardless of the outlier's industry. Doug Nelson, 50, a regional vice president at Philip Morris USA, decided to peg the performance of his cigarette sales team to that of what is perhaps the fastest, most efficient team anywhere: an Indianapolis 500 pit crew. Says Nelson: "Our sales reps are like race car drivers. They can't succeed without incredible cooperation from the support team back at headquarters. Just as a pit crew monitors a driver by computer, laptops keep us in constant touch with our reps."

Nelson came up with his idea because his goals of high productivity and flawless execution reminded him of the impeccable performance of Team Penske, which Marlboro happens to sponsor: Last year the team's driver, Al Unser Jr., won the Indianapolis 500. As a race car driver screams to a stop, six people leap over a three-foot wall, give him a drink, change four tires, make necessary repairs, and refuel the car--in roughly the time it took you to read this sentence. Says Team Penske manager Chuck Sprague: "When the competition is moving at 200 miles an hour, every second you're in the pits matters a lot."

To drive home the analogy for a major sales meeting last October, Nelson festooned the room with racing flags and showed a video of Team Penske in action. "It's natural for sales reps to feel they're out there alone," he says. "We wanted to stress that everyone has to work together." And be quicker, too. Inspired by the meeting, Nelson's reps have cut the time they take to plan and execute a cigarette promotion from over a month to about two weeks.

HUBRIS? WHAT'S THAT?

Most mavericks are made. Richard Branson was born. The aging hippie, now 44, has raised establishment bashing to an art form and built a business with close to $2 billion in revenues in the process. The Virgin brand, which he first popularized as a record label and then as a discount airline, stands for youth, independence, and cheekiness. Branson has put the irreverent name on everything from vodka to computers (he did think better of using it for his condom business). His latest display of derring-do came in November, when he launched Virgin Cola, a Coke look-alike and contender.

Enthralled by his style and impressed by his wealth (London's Sunday Times ranks him the 11th-richest person in Britain), Branson's countrymen even look to him as a moral authority. When a poll for BBC Radio asked 1,200 people who should be charged with rewriting the Ten Commandments, Branson scored fourth, after Mother Teresa, the Pope, and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Although Branson is not nearly as well known in the U.S., his brand recognition is certain to grow as he opens his chain of entertainment megastores across the country.

Businessmen dismiss Branson as an utter flake. They take every opportunity to discredit him. But they don't dare ignore him. Last fall Coca-Cola launched an ad campaign that portrayed Virgin and other private-label colas as grim and depressing next to the Real Thing. London market research firm Taylor Nelson AGB says that Coke, "hit by the launch of Virgin and private label colas," lost ten percentage points of market share in British supermarkets in 1994. Yet Coke President M. Douglas Ivester publicly dismissed Virgin and a bevy of other private brands as "nothing but a tiny bug ready to be crushed."

Branson, as always, refuses to buzz off. With characteristic hubris ("Hubris? What's that? Get me a dictionary," he shouts), he seems exhilarated by the challenge. "I believe that if you're going to take someone on, you might as well take on the biggest brand in the world. Besides, most people who have been around as long as Coke have become quite fat. I believe they've got very vulnerable skin."

Though it's too early to predict its fate, Virgin Cola appears to have some fizz. It immediately got 9% of the cola business in British supermarkets. "We're already into the profits," Branson claims. The truth, of course, will stay padlocked in Branson's office, along with the drink's secret formula, developed by Branson's partner in the venture, the Toronto-based Cott Corp.

Even if Virgin Cola never amounts to more than a mug in the bucket, Branson could build a respectable business by siphoning off just a small share of Britain's $1.9 billion in wholesale soft drink revenues. And that's largely what makes Branson so maverick: With the flair of Peter Pan, his favorite character, he'll do battle with anyone. His goal is not so much to slay as to lop off a limb or two with his lower-cost alternatives.

If Coke wants a reminder of just how effective Branson can be, it need only recall his run-in with British Airways. Lord King of Wartnaby, former chairman of British Airways, did his best to embarrass Branson, calling him "too old to rock and too young to fly." On his lordship's watch, employees of BA conducted a highly publicized smear campaign against Virgin-which allegedly included infiltrating its computers, spreading rumors that it was near insolvency, and trying to persuade passengers to switch their tickets. All to no avail. Virgin Atlantic Airways captured $750 million in revenues in 1994. And in 1993, BA paid Branson nearly $1 million in sorry money for its antics.

Branson is a black belt at throwing the competition off balance, an art at which mavericks excel. To be sure, these eccentric folks have their faults and bouts of bum luck. But they understand that it's no longer enough to be lean and mean. Today you have to be different.