Top leaders in any organization should not only be passionately committed to excellence but also have a strong and sustained focus on driving continuous improvement in policies, processes and tools across the entire organization. Commitment has to be real and running deep down their hearts.
Why is excellence so important? Excellence is a very powerful weapon in the armory of any organization to create and sustain competitive edge in the market. Continuous improvement in policies, processes and tools across the entire organization helps the organization to become increasingly efficient, productive and cost-effective.
The truth in many organizations is however far removed from the above situation. Such organizations would display following characteristics:
All the above challenges can be overcome provided the top leaders, and if not the topmost leader, is truly committed to excellence and committed to challenging everyone to continuously improve policies, processes and tools across the entire organization.
This is certainly a tough calling and that's why many organizations struggle at the margins and never become world class. If these organizations want to change this, there is a clear choice in front of them - at the minimum, change the topmost leader and desirably, all or most top leaders. The boards of such organizations have a crucial role to play in this change.
Why is excellence so important? Excellence is a very powerful weapon in the armory of any organization to create and sustain competitive edge in the market. Continuous improvement in policies, processes and tools across the entire organization helps the organization to become increasingly efficient, productive and cost-effective.
The truth in many organizations is however far removed from the above situation. Such organizations would display following characteristics:
- Some top leaders and most middle-level leaders have a narrow, operational view and engaged in excessive and constant firefighting. On the other hand some top leaders have a complete hands-off approach and hence fail to provide strategic perspective to the operational aspects of the business
- Hiring in such organizations is transactional with focus on execution of current business needs with no long term strategy and hence no focus on improvement. Awards and rewards are given to those people who recover projects from the brink of disaster conveniently ignoring why they led them there in the first place
All the above challenges can be overcome provided the top leaders, and if not the topmost leader, is truly committed to excellence and committed to challenging everyone to continuously improve policies, processes and tools across the entire organization.
This is certainly a tough calling and that's why many organizations struggle at the margins and never become world class. If these organizations want to change this, there is a clear choice in front of them - at the minimum, change the topmost leader and desirably, all or most top leaders. The boards of such organizations have a crucial role to play in this change.
