In this article Director Consultant, Dr. Ashraf Almimi, advocates the pursuit of excellence for long term business sustainability.
It’s not uncommon for companies to have one primary goal; to make a profit and satisfy their shareholders.
But is this a goal or an end result?
Should the focus be on making money or gaining a customer? Making profit at the expense of customer satisfaction is simply unsustainable in the long-term.
So, what kind of customer are we looking for? Is it a customer that is satisfied just once or is it a loyal one? And how can taking the Excellence journey help companies create loyal customers and, as a result, a more stable business?
Spotting opportunities for improvement
After being immersed in the principles of Excellence, many of us develop a ‘Hawk Eye’ and unconsciously spot opportunities for improvement wherever we go.
A visit with my son to the Paediatric clinic reminded me that repeatable success is only attained when Excellence is at the core of the business and the organisation is pulling in the same direction.
It was while my son and I were waiting to see the doctor that I spotted at least 21 opportunities for improvement when observing the working practice of the Doctor’s assistant. I noticed that she did not welcome guests on arrival, she chatted on the phone for more than 15 minutes about unimportant things, she spoke loudly to a patient who quietly asked if it was possible to be given priority due to special circumstances and then gave unhelpful information to a patient enquiring about the Doctor’s arrival time.
When the Pediatrician arrived, he welcomed every patient in the clinic, spoke to us one by one, joked with our kids, and made us laugh. With his attitude, he covered up for many of the mistakes of his assistant. I shared my observations with the Doctor during the consultation, he was very grateful and promised to take action.
As with many businesses, it’s often the case that when some individuals or departments are doing a great job, others are less customer focused. This ‘patchy’ service can lead to the customer’s overall perception of a company or organisation being ‘dragged down’ by their overall experience. For example, the customer’s delight in their great new product is tempered by receiving an incorrect or late invoice from the finance department.
“Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all-time thing. You don’t win once in a while, you don’t do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing”…. Vince Lombardi
Less profit today for a sustainable future
In this turbulent world, it’s more important than ever before that companies have robust methods in place for continuing Excellence. How many hugely successful companies do you know that have failed or lost their edge because they didn’t look to the long term and focus on the total experience of their customers? And in many cases those failures were a great shock – if a company of such size and longevity could fail, who else might fail?
To thrive rather than just survive in competitive markets, companies should not only focus on satisfying the customer today but manage and develop business processes that create innovative new products for their customers tomorrow and the day after, efficiently and effectively.
This approach may incur cost short term, but companies will soon reap the benefits of predictably improving performance, loyal customers and sustainable futures.
So what does it take to deliver Excellence?
Fundamentally all employees need to think, behave and perform in a different way. This may not be possible with the existing knowledge and skills they possess so Management may need to invest in training and coaching to build the capability to manage and improve processes.
“85% of the reasons for failure to meet customer expectations are related to deficiencies in systems and processes rather than the employees. The role of management is to change the process rather than badgering individuals to do better”. W.E. Deming
The pursuit of Excellence requires companies to align their work ultimately with their customers through efficient and flexible processes; to have standards to ensure these processes are commonly referenced; and to have a system for monitoring processes to ensure that they are correctly executed and continuously improved.
Achieving and sustaining Excellence requires investment to build the capacity of key players who then contribute towards the creation of a continuous improvement culture and exemplify the principles to sustain it. Those that embark on the Excellence journey find it hugely rewarding and it provides positive experiences to all those involved.
As you start to identify potential opportunities for improvement it’s worth considering whether you want profit today or a sustainable future for your organisation.
Here are some things to think about as you consider you and your organisation’s Excellence journey:
- Build long-term relationships with your customers and provide them with an experience that gives them the ‘delight factor’ to guarantee their loyalty
- Make new loyal friends but remember to keep old loyal friends happy
- Create an environment of excellence for employees, products, services, and throughout the company’s system
- Provide customers with the quickest, friendliest, and most accurate services and products available
- Deliver exceptional value for the customer’s investment
- Start with learning
Being Excellent requires the organisational focus to be on both the path (the process) and the end result (the outcome). Excellence should be seen more of a journey than a destination, more learning than being right, more involving than dictating, more about eradicating root causes than firefighting and more about thriving than surviving.
0 comments:
Post a Comment