One commonality that I’ve noticed among the many companies I interact with is that what is important in business is really not important. What I mean is; many business owners simply focus on what’s is in front of them and that is often the next sale not the ‘big picture’.
Personally and professionally, I like to focus on not only the big picture, but all the details in between. This is often refereed to as;’Business Excellence’ Business Excellence (BE) is about developing and strengthening the management systems and processes of an organization to improve its performance and create value for all its stakeholders. BE is much more than having a quality system in place. BE is about achieving excellence in everything that an organization does including it’s:
1- Leadership and Management Style
2- Business Strategy
3- Customer Focus
4- Information Management
5- People and Processes
6- Most importantly achieving superior business results that ultimately delivers excellence to those you serve.
To understand Business Excellence, it is necessary to understand the core values and concepts from which Business Excellence Models (BEMs) are derived. These values are essentially are the attributes, beliefs and/or behaviors that Business Excellence organizations exhibit. They are the foundation of values and beliefs that are embedded into the fabric of successful organizations.
If you want to run a company that is sustainable beyond your life time, then should go ahead and adopt a business excellence platform. Example of these values include:
• Visionary leadership: Your organization’s senior leaders should set directions and create a customer focus, clear and visible organizational values, and high expectations for the workforce. The directions, values, and expectations should balance the needs of all your stakeholders.
• Customer-driven excellence: Performance and quality are judged by an organization’s customers. Thus, your organization must take into account all product features and characteristics and all modes of customer access and support that contribute value to your customers.
• Organizational and personal learning: Achieving the highest levels of organizational performance requires a well-executed approach to organizational and personal learning that includes sharing knowledge via systematic processes. Organizational learning includes both continuous improvement of existing approaches and significant change or innovation, leading to new goals and approaches.
• Valuing workforce members and partners: An organization’s success depends increasingly on an engaged workforce that benefits from meaningful work, clear organizational direction, and performance accountability and that has a safe, trusting, and cooperative environment.
• Agility: Success in today’s ever-changing, globally competitive environment demands agility – a capacity for rapid change and flexibility.
• Focus on the future: Ensuring an organization’s sustainability requires understanding the short and longer term factors that affect your organization and marketplace.
• Managing for innovation: Making meaningful change to improve an organization’s products, services, programs, processes, operations, and business model to create new value.
So I ask; when was the last time you critically analyzed your organization’s performance? How has your organization been performing for the last three (3) years? Is your organization a leader or a laggard? Or do you not know how your organization compares against others? Do you even know what you should be measuring?
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