Marketing is not just about research and decisions, but also, more importantly, making things happen. There is the framework for managers whose companies wish to pursue the route to world class status. The responsibility for a world class strategy usually rests with the chief executive and senior management.
Becoming a world class company is not a simple process, and requires effort and commitment from the entire organization. Developing a strategy for action is essential if world class status is to be achieved.
Define “World Class”
“World Class” is a concept that is difficult to define. However, an accepted working definition is that a world class company should be able to compete with any other organization in its chosen markets and that it aspires to world-beating standards in everything it does, in every department or division. “World class” also embraces the practice of, and excellence in, techniques such as Total Quality Management, continuous improvement, customer service, international benchmarking, flexible working, and training. World class organizations also accept the necessity for continuous change.
“Business now shares in much of the responsibility for our global quality of life. ”
——Roberto Giozueta
Action Checklist
CEOs need to run through the followings for a better action plan:
1.Consider outside influences
Identify the factors in the external environment that call for a strategic response from your business. These can be grouped under main headings such as economic factors, demographics trends, environmental factors, technology, suppliers, and competition.
2. Establish the world class vision
Determine the core business of your organization—that at which your organization should excel. Top management must make a vision of excellence clear in a brief statement that is impossible to misinterpret. In addition to helping form this vision, the chief executive’s role is to clarify the message, push forward change, and champion the ideas and capabilities that will beat competitors.
3. Analyze your current position
Benchmark your organization against your competitors as far as you can. This can be very difficult, as much of the necessary information may not be available. However, organizations do exist to help in this process.
Consider the following aspects:
your product
its price
its availability
your customer service
your policy for continuous improvement
your costs
you market share
Do you match your competition in these areas, or is your organization well below or considerably superior to them? Don’t limit this measure to competitors in your own country; compare yourself agains worldwide competition. Identify which organizations are excellent within these areas and determine what makes them the best—-in order to beat them!
Assess where you stand in customers’ eyes. What is their perception of your status compared to the reputation of your competitors?
4. Focus on core capabilities
From the analyses of the external environment, the core business of the organization, and the standing of competitors, draw up a list of the core capabilities of your organization that will enable you to compete in world markets. Core capabilities include:
product knowledge/service skills
marketing skills
innovation/research capacity
financial planning and control
human resource capabilities (including motivations as well as skills)
Determine which of these core capabilities need extra focus and resource their development.
“In a global economy the challenges and changes are universal. ”
——Robert Heller
5. Building a corporate strategy
Focus on achieving better products or services, better factories or service operations, better organization, better management, and better information and communication.
Ask yourself questions such as:
Have the key business processes been defined and understood?
Has a quality or customer focus ethic been established throughout the organization?
Are quality and reliability of products and services measured?
Are the key performance measures reviewed? Are they improving?
Is everyone in the organization informed of results and developments?
Is customer satisfaction monitored on a regular basis?
Are employees multi-skilled? Are they flexible and willing adapt?
Do your employees have continuing personal development plans in place?
How are creativity and innovation encouraged and nurtured?
How well does communication flow?
Does it flow in all directions?
6. Set high targets for the organization
Set imaginative and ambitious targets by identifying where you intend to be in one, three, and five years’ time. If targets are easily achieved there is a danger that you will rest on your laurels. Being satisfied with these improvements means never become world class.
Ensure that organizational targets are translated into divisional and organizational goals that incorporated into individual objectives.
Get staff into
7. Develop simple performance measures
Measurement processes, as simple and straightforward as possible, allow you to continuously monitor what is happening and to continuously report on progress. Performance measures must be relevant to your aims: concentrate on customer service, time reduction, and quality, and remember that within a world class company, financial measures are not the most important measure in terms of achieving your objectives.
8. Adopt straightforward reporting procedures
Complex reports require a lot of preparation and take time to understand, and consequently rend to be produced monthly at best. World class companies must be able to act immediately on the results of performance measurement; if a report takes three weeks to generate, then this three-week lead-time will impact on continuous improvement. Adopt the one-page management reporting rule.
9. Communicate your progress
Nothing inspires and motivates like success. Employees must be kept full informed of the organization’s progress (get your staff to produce their own progress charts if possible). By adopting simple measurement techniques, results can be given to employees on a daily basis via email or notice board, preferably in a graphic or pictorial form. Progress reports can an inspirational form of communication; poor communication is responsible for many corporate failures and shortcomings.
10. Revise your performance targets
As your organization raises its performance in the areas you have defined, identify new areas to be improved. As areas improve, their reports should reduce to exception reporting (reports showing only those items that deviate from plan or the established norm), allowing the organization to focus on new needs.
11. Assess effectiveness
Becoming world class, though an achievement, is not the end of the process. To be a world class company you must continue to benchmark yourself against your competitors regularly. If you fail to do this, your organization will slip from the position it has achieved and be replaced by another. Staying world class just as hard as becoming world class, if not harder.
Thoughts Staters
Do you know the key performance in your industry?
What approaches to ensuring and measuring customer satisfaction do you have in place?
Do you have the means of measuring the quality of your organization’s performance?