Tuesday, March 9, 2010

6:40 CST

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Building Competitive Advantage

Today's competitive marketplace demands that organizations provide the highest level of quality product and service, on time, and at the lowest price.  Whether the company is a manufacturing plant or service related business the problem and opportunity are the same, the one that can effectively achieve the demand of the marketplace succeeds.  With stiff competition, companies must look throughout their organization and in every functional area to affect the level of excellence required to achieve competitive advantage.  

It is not effective to consider that only manufacturing needs to make improvements.  Consider consequences of shipping wrong orders, AR/AP errors, incomplete training, untimely maintenance repairs, stock outs or inefficient change management, every area of the business influencing competitive advantage.  It is an ongoing balancing activity to run operations while working to squeeze out waste and become lean and flexible in every area of the business.  Value and price are key components to not only winning customer loyalty and satisfaction but also keeping it.  Doing the basics consistently is a key condition, while achieving that level of desired performance requires effective planning, resources, and execution. 

Two approaches, Knowledge Transfer and Leadership Development provide the greatest benefit and value for organizations to realize their potential.  By applying either substantial and incremental changes in a systematic way, where a plan is clearly documented and results can be measured the company can validate its efforts.  These approaches develop high performance, high morale, expected outcomes and measurable results.  

Knowledge Transfer is as basically the act of conveying or sharing valuable ideas, concepts or information.  This transfer can occur in several ways; through training and consulting services.  These activities are both premeditated and evolutionary in nature.  Premeditated because it can stem from planning or defined activities such as building high performance teams, hiring a new employee, entering into a new market or customer base where new skills may be required.  Other activities can include implementing 5S and Lean Philosophies or a host of other continuous improvement initiatives.  

The evolutionary aspect can occur as the company grows or specific problems are identified.  Not unlike the premeditated aspect of training, evolutionary requirements can occur as natural changes to the work environment happen and building skills sets or refocusing team members is identified and necessary.  Continuous improvement is a broad topic but fits perfectly into the benefits of Knowledge Transfer, a great way of gaining ideas, philosophies and recourses for initiative and learning needs.

Leadership Development is a vehicle toward identifying opportunities and crafting a plan of execution.  It is both human and operational and it touches every aspect of a business.  It involves developing:

• strategic business plans 

• assessing and understanding organizational culture

• planning and managing strategic organizational change  

It is a form of training but unlike training the leadership development is concerned with defining and establishing the business acumen that contribute to consistent overall performance.  It involves a broad range of business aspects including setting performance plans and objectives, developing leadership roles and succession planning, developing processes, resources and critical thinking and so on.  Combined, the efforts are towards building systems and relationships that are consistent with an organizations objectives and building competitive advantage.