Becoming ’world class’

Many writers on management issues argue that for a business to grow significantly, it you must aspire to become ’world class’. But to succeed in this way it has to achieve world class status in most of the processes it carries out in the normal course of business.

Here lies one of the major problems in trying to remain competitive in the twenty-first century. For non-core functions such as IT and finance to remain competitive in most business situations, costs will need to be reduced and service improved on a regular basis. For most organizations this will mean, at the very best, fewer key roles for the relevant executives. In turn this is likely to mean that the really capable executives will seek employers that can offer growth in their specialist area.

So how can an organization remain competitive in all or most of its functions or business processes? Regular re-engineering will probably be out of the question, when considering the management time involved. Admittedly, the redesign stage of BPR can be completed in just a few days when done for a second or third time, but new implementations often take as long as the original. In any case, it is unlikely that any amount of re-engineering will transfer non-core functions into the sort of departments that will attract the best people.

Why assume that competitors will obtain ongoing world class status?

At this stage, this is a very fair question. A reasonable summary of the statements made so far in Chapter 2, might be as follows.

• There will continue to be developments in technology, probably at a gradually increasing rate.

• From now on all heads of functions will need to ensure that their performance levels are maintained at a level that keeps them competitive. This means that the service provided must be continually improved and the costs stabilized or reduced.

• Benchmarking and, perhaps, other techniques will be developed to highlight good and poor performances within months of them occurring.

• A range of management techniques, software systems and consultants with their methodologies are on hand to provide salvation.

• Sadly, a significant number of projects set up to achieve this salvation fail to meet the main targets set for them. Failure can result from a variety of reasons, but quite often it happens because management backs away from taking difficult decisions. There is no sign that management is improving in this respect.

• Even where a project has been successful, it does not mean that the improvement or newly found competitiveness will automatically last for a significant amount of time.

It would be difficult to argue with the above summary but some managers studying it might nevertheless come to the following conclusions.

• ’A negative benchmarking report would be damaging, but there is only so much I can do to change and improve the existing structure.’

• ’If so many performance improvement projects fail, why should I assume that any of our competitors are going to achieve this, so called, world class?’

• ’Even if a competitor should achieve world class status, how long will they be able to keep it?’

• ’Why should we be concerned by these developments?’