The 4 Principles of a Successful Business Today

Every business, every organization, sets out to achieve certain results, and they expect to achieve those results.  No-one sets out to underachieve but in today’s business environment it has become absolutely and unequivocally critical to drive the limited, scarce and expensive resources of an organization to the desired results.

Why is it more critical today than in the past?  Significant errors, flights of fancy and lapses in judgment are punished by shareholders, customers and competitors without mercy, and many times to the point where the organization simply can’t recover.

Businesses today are operating in extremely volatile, complex strategic landscapes that are being ravaged by a multiplicity of forces including:

1. Increasing customer and stakeholder satisfaction
2. Abundant availability and distribution of information
3. Accelerating pace of technological change
4. Rapidly expanding technology access
5. Globalization of markets and competition
6. Global wage and job skills shift
7. Environmental responsibility and resource limitation

The impact of these forces is to remove the known, the comfort of past experiences and introduces new paradigms, new operating practices and the constant challenge of change.

These forces have created an increasingly demanding and aggressive customer base.  As we strive to secure “life-of-customer revenue”, customers today are less loyal than ever before. Customers have become more knowledgeable and have through technology, such as the Internet, greater options readily available to them.  Customers want it when they want it, how they want it and at the price they want it and if you are not innovative, flexible or adaptable to respond you will lose those customers.

So it is easy to see “why it is so hard to win?” But if we cut through the clutter and complexity, there are four underpinnings of a successful business today:

Leadership must work “on” the business, not just “in” the business

Too often, leadership becomes too embroiled in the day-to-day activities of the business that they lose sight of the need to step back and ensure that the organization is heading in the appropriate direction.  Liken this to an airline pilot, who should concern themselves with flying and landing that plane, and not concerned about what is happening in the cabin, unless of course, there is an extraordinary circumstance.

You can’t be all things to all people

Different customers buy different values.  A company must stake out and claim for itself a value position within the marketplace, and then excel at unmatched delivery of that value to targeted customers.  Trying to be all things to all people, only leads to increasing complexity, inefficiencies and ineffectiveness.

Good isn’t good enough

Customers demand premium service and products that are effortless, flawless and instantaneous.  Companies can no longer compromise on quality or performance, and must deliver error free goods and services first time every time.

Stay ahead by moving ahead

Success factors are constantly shifting and changing, and with more demanding customers and aggressive competition, companies must continuously raise standards and expectations.