In Search of Excellence - Revisited

In Search of Excellence - Revisited I happened to revise through the famous book of M/s Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman Jr.

titled as above and published by Harper & Row, New York, USA in 1982. The eight attributes that emerged common to all excellent companies then, are applicable even today. This shows that the basic principle of management does not change with time or technology.

1. A Bias for action All successful companies while adapting an analytical approach did not suffer from what is known as 'Paralysis through Analysis' syndrome. When they got into problems, they just got a team together and fixed it. The objective was 'Do it. Fix it. Try it'. Some companies also called it 'Ready.

Fire. Aim'. Conventional wisdom will say Ready. Aim. Fire. To put it simply, successful companies do not wait for the cows to come home on their own. No cow ever does. They employ a few Cowboys along with guard Dogs to drive the cattle home. Action and Speed are important. The managements of successful companies do not punish their teams for failure in producing results despite good efforts. They give them enough opportunities to come out with suitable solutions. A baby learns to walk and run only after falling but does not give up trying again. It gets hurt repeatedly and as parents if we interfere out of concern, the baby will never learn to walk.

2. Close to the Customer While every company maintains that it is close to the customer, it is more of lip service. In many organizations, the top management is not aware what is happening at the grass root level. We are saying this after experience with some of the biggest and top global 100 brands. With customer service being outsourced, the standard of service has gone down and not up. The BPO unit becomes a filter and direct contact is lost. An average customer gets frustrated and leaves. No one has the time to complain. Customer service must be manned by your best people and not by the most available. Successful companies do not hesitate to over spend on customer service. They do not succumb to the temptation of saving some cents or pennies in this area.

3. Autonomy, Innovation & Entrepreneurship Successful companies have champions throughout the organization at every level. They foster and encourage innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership. They give sufficient autonomy to people and do not hold them on short reins. They encourage creativity, practical risk taking and good tries. They accept mistakes will be made in the learning process. How does one improve without learning?

4. Productivity through People Successful companies respect individuals. The management versus labor feeling is largely absent.

Everybody tries to pull his or her weight for a shared purpose. When a company claims 'people are its assets', one can safely assume that it is a problem area. It is stating the obvious. It is rather strange that companies claim that they are strong in areas where they are often weak. However, there are always some exceptions to any rule. Excellent companies manage their 3M's very well Men (and Women), Materials and Money.

5. Achievements & Values Driven Successful companies do not boast about their size or technology or resources or structure or innovation or timing. They focus on achievements, values, quality, service and delivery. Successful companies have more people who are MBWA's. They walk the talk. Successful companies do not focus on financial performance alone. They know financial success would be achieved with focus on points mentioned above.

6. Stick to Knitting Most successful businesses concentrate on what they know best. The old maxim 'never acquire a business you do not know' is still applicable. Very few try to be conglomerates though it was the in thing in the 1970s and 80s. Only a few conglomerates appear in the top 100 global brands today.

7. Simple form, Lean staff The organizational structure should be simple with minimum support staff. Many functions are being increasingly outsourced today but outsourcing customer service will bring disaster in the long run. When it is done, the company is no longer close to the customer.

8. Simultaneous loose-tight properties What the authors meant by this statement was that organizations had both centralized and decentralized approach to decision making. Product development was pushed down to the lowest level. Throughout my career I had more brilliant and practical ideas from service engineers and service mechanics rather than from the highly qualified R&D people. Core beliefs and values were to be decided at the top. Such companies have a strong work culture. It is important to realize that not all people fit in strong cultures.

It would be noted that all the above eight attributes revolve around people. Lastly, though it is not mentioned by them, communications plays a very important role. Larger the organization, more critical it becomes.

The authors came to final conclusion that every company that was deemed excellent always had a good and strong work culture, great values and good to great leader at the helm. In the words of one of the earliest Management Gurus, Chester Barnard, the role of a leader is to manage the values in the organization. That is the bottom-line in the search for excellence.

© July 2007. www.madgopes.com. All rights reserved.





In Search of Excellence - Revisited - To learn more about this author, visit Madhavan T Gopalachary's Website.

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