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Top Ten Characteristics of a Winning Company posted by Peter J. Patsula

Outlined below are ten conditions that make companies achieve a state of excellence, enabling them to rise above their competition, gain consumer trust, and build profits. Study these conditions carefully, and try and figure out how you can apply them to your business plan, especially your company and marketing ideologies and practices.

EXCELLENT COMPANIES ...

1. Are quality and value driven.

Excellent companies seek to provide unequaled quality, service, and reliability. They strive to make things that work fast and last. Their fundamental goal is to create products and services that add value to the lives of their customers. Excellent companies also believe that the basic philosophy of an organization has far more to do with its achievements than do technological or economic resources as well as organizational structures and innovation. In other words, their company will succeed if its members share a common vision, feel they are important part of the whole, and look out for each other.

2. Believe in being decisive.

Excellent companies tackle serious problems with their full force quickly and decisively. When they have a problem, they throw together a decision making team, stick them in a room, and don't let them out until they've come up with a solution - usually this takes no longer than a week. After that, they implement the solution. Their standard operating procedure is, "Fix it, try it, and then get on with it."

3. Believe in productivity through people, not things.

Excellent companies treat the rank and file as the root source of quality and productivity gain. They encourage happiness and a sense of community. They do not foster us vs. them labor attitudes or regard capital investment as the fundamental source of efficiency improvement. They listen to people in the trenches, recognizing that their most valuable resource is the knowledge and ingenuity of the people on their front line.

NOTE. A Japanese research study found that the top managers knew four percent of the problems in their company while supervisors knew 74 percent. According to the same study, however, workers in the trenches knew 100 percent.

4. Concentrate on long-term goals not short-term profits.

Excellent companies are more interested in their long-term survival rather than short-term gain. They do not reward shortsighted and short-term steady growth. They see the BIG picture. In fact, they will let company profits slide for a quarter or two, and perhaps as long as a year, as long as their long range planning objectives are being met.

5. Develop new product lines in response to market changes.

Excellent companies understand that all products and services eventually become obsolete. Therefore, they keep in touch with their customer's tastes and preference and their changing market characteristics. They regularly seek out feedback from current customers to help generate leads to new product or service ideas. They get close and stay close to their customers to be able to satisfy their needs and anticipate their wants. To gain access to a steady stream of customer input, excellent companies use suggestion boxes, questionnaires and 800 numbers.

6. Encourage innovative thinking.

Excellent companies believe that all members in their organization have the potential to be innovators and that every worker is seen as a source of ideas, not just acting as a pair of hands. Excellent companies foster autonomy and entrepreneurship. They show a distinct willingness to support failed attempts. In fact, fundamentally they believe that to innovate it is expected that you must first generate a reasonable number of mistakes. Excellent companies also seek to be innovative in almost every aspect of their business including pricing, personnel policies, distribution, sales promotion, stationary, signs, etc. - not just in their products and services.

7. Know what business they are really in.

Excellent companies know exactly what they are selling. They don't sell trashcans; they sell containers. They don't sell cars; they sell luxury sedans. They don't sell perfume; they sell romance.

8. Start with a well-defined distinctive competence and stick to it.

Excellent companies concentrate on a narrow product area and a narrow market niche so that their limited resources can be used as efficiently as possible. They distinguish themselves from their competitors by identifying what they are really good at. Excellent companies never acquire a business they don't know how to run.

9. Take action!

Excellent companies try new things out. They experiment with new technologies, marketing techniques and manufacturing processes. They aren't scared to lose a little to gain a lot.

10. Take action, with DIRECTION.

Excellent companies carefully develop and regularly update their business plan. They realize that having an outdated plan is almost as good a having no plan. They regularly ask themselves:
· What business am I really in?
· What do I sell?
· Who buys what I sell?
· Where is my competition? What makes me better than them?
· How much does it cost to run my business?
· How can I make my operations more efficient?
· What management controls are needed? How can they be carried out?
· Who can I turn to if I need help, either financial or managerial?

NOTE A survey by a group of SCORE members showed that those who attended their workshops were more likely to succeed if they were deemed to be well prepared. Of the 12 percent of those attending the SCORE workshops who actually went into businesses of their own, the 7 percent of the 12 who were judged to be not prepared, either sent up help signals at later stages or joined the sad statistics of small business bankruptcies.

For more characteristics of a winning company and more detailed explanations, read ...
Guidebook #12: Learning Why Companies Succeed and Why they Fail

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