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2.08.2008

Best Companies - A Simple Answer

I just finished attending an executive team meeting with one of our channel partners, and instead of participating I was trying to rationalize my unease.

It seems most people at this paygrade, in order to sound smart, need to over complicate business. I didn`t have our library of best practices at my finger tips, but when it was my time turn - the following simplicity made sense.

The very best companies did a couple of things better than their good competitors, things that distiguished them from the crowd. Here is what I said:

1. They understand where the current and future competitive advatange exists.
2. They created an overarching brand that embodies their competitive advantage.
3. They aligned people with strategy, and processes with customers.
4. They built processes for production and service where ordinary performance creates extraordinary results, and
5. They developed employee problem solving and decision making skills so people could self-manage.

This is very similar to our four major catories of best practices for sustainable growth:
• Market Intelligence
• Brand & Strategy
• Systems & Processes
• Human Performance

But that doesn`t roll off the tongue, and didn`t make me sound smart. Or did it?