Strategic Vision
As Apple’s Success Attests, Operational Excellence
Isn’t Everything, But It Is Essential
By Anand Sharma
Operational
Excellence
The death of Apple’s co-founder and
CEO, Steve Jobs, and release of his
biography last year gave business owners
and managers many opportunities to
reflect on the life and accomplishments
of an incredible business leader. Jobs’
remarkable and successful resurrection
of Apple can’t help but make us think
about the performance potential of our
own companies, and the legacy that we
want to leave behind.
Very secretive on the supply chain
side of its business, Apple isn’t known
for operational excellence or lean
production methods, mostly because
it subcontracts manufacturing
and assembly of its products and
components. Still, it repeatedly manages
to meet dramatic demand spikes with
every new product launch. But from a
value perspective—as in recognizing,
creating and providing value that its
customers are willing to pay for, a.k.a.,
innovation—very few companies in
history have been so successful.
If it were easy to replicate Apple’s
success, the company wouldn’t be a
Strategic Growth
Strategic
Growth
Model
Leadership
Disciplined Execution
Operational excellence isn’t everything.
You might be surprised to hear such
a statement coming from me. After
all, for more than two decades now
we’ve helped clients become more
operationally effective—by many
orders of magnitude—and achieve
vastly superior financial performance.
But operational excellence is only one
path to superior market performance.
Another path is probably best illustrated
by a company that’s never far from
today’s business headlines: Apple.
Value
Innovation
Organizational Mission & Core Values
subject of endless fascination. Still,
there are elements of its value-creation
model that other business leaders
can learn from and build upon.
The Strategic Growth Model that
I will explore here begins with an
organization’s mission and core values,
and combines operational excellence
with value innovation through
disciplined execution.
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Connect that which you
VALUE to that which you DO
The mission and core values of an
organization empower people by
defining behaviors and clarifying rules of
engagement. Our core values at TBM—
which I won’t recite here—reflect our
focus on providing clear economic
value to our customers and treating our
employees with the utmost respect.
Strategic Vision, continued
Apple’s Core Values
Connect to Leaders,
Employees and Consumers
“We believe that people with
passion can change the world for
the better... And that those people
who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world, are the
ones who actually do.”
—Steve Jobs,1997
A company’s mission and values should
make it clear for everyone what is
expected and accepted. Ideally, for such
values to have resonance, they will
connect personally with leadership,
employees and customers. Of course,
management behavior and decisions
must always reflect the company’s values.
Become a Market Maker
To avoid becoming a commodity
producer, manufacturers must regularly
develop and offer forward leaps in
customer value. By gathering relevant
customer insights and unarticulated
needs, and applying proven analytical
tools, companies can uncover new,
exclusive knowledge about their markets
and customers. Following this value
innovation approach, they can then
translate this knowledge into unique
products and services.
For example, consider the key
competitive issues and factors in your
markets. Do the answers to any of the
following questions reveal any new
paths to customer value?
• What product or service factors that
the industry takes for granted can be
eliminated?
• What factors could be reduced well
below the industry standard?
• What factors could be raised well
beyond the industry standard?
• What services could be created that
the industry has never offered?
The mindset of the leadership team must
also change. You have to think less about
your customers as companies that buy
your products, and more as people who
you want to help be more successful.
Think less about building on what you’ve
always done, and more about what
could be done. Think less about current
industry conditions, and more about
how those conditions can be shaped and
transformed. Think less about doing
more with less, and more about doing
something that’s never been done before.
A Vision Without
a Plan Is a Dream
The loftiest and most visionary strategy
means nothing if it can’t be executed.
According to one research study, only
half of companies report some success
executing their strategic plans, and
only one out of three report significant
success when it comes to execution.
The Japanese quality expert, Ryuji
Fukuda, noted that most business
strategies and transformations fail
primarily because of a lack of direction,
resources, time and cooperation. He
created the X-matrix to monitor and
address such issues as part of the strategy
deployment framework. The strategy
deployment process makes it possible
for managers to align an organization’s
energy at all levels, implement
countermeasures when expectations
are not being met, and hold people
accountable. It incorporates buy-in from
your leadership team and makes everyone
focus on the most important areas for the
future of the organization.
Watering the Soil
The final component of the strategic
growth model is leadership. The
business leaders who I have worked
with personally share some common
personality characteristics. They are great
communicators who can clearly convey
their vision for the future. They realize
we have two ears and one mouth for a
reason, and therefore prize the inputs of
others. They are zealots whose passion is
contagious and who can be deliberately
unsettling when necessary in order to
release pent-up creativity. Finally, they
are servants who derive their greatest
satisfaction from putting their skills,
position and experience in service to others.
In closing I’d like to leave you with two
questions to consider. What do you need
to be “more of ” or “less of ” as a leader
to transform your business for strategic
growth? And, how do you want to be
remembered? This strategic growth
model can help get you there.
This article is based on
TBM President and
CEO Anand Sharma’s
leadership presentation
at the TBM Executive
Exchange in June 2012.
Blue Oceans: The Value Innovation Metaphor
If a company limits its innovation efforts to increments of what already exists, trying
to outperform rivals to grab a bigger share of the market, it’s swimming in waters
bloodied by competition, a red ocean. But if your company can identify an
unfulfilled need and respond with a unique solution, it creates its own blue ocean
free of competition where demand is created rather than fought over.
— Paraphrased from Blue Ocean Strategy,
by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, 2005
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