NO! Your Company Shouldn’t Be the Best at Everything

One of the mistakes made by managers, leaders, business owners, and executives (whatever title encourages you pay attention) is an approach pushes an agenda claiming that everything in the organization must excel. The new CEO of BMW was recently quoted in a Reuters article –

“We don’t always have to be first, but we most certainly have to be far better than our competitors in everything that we do. This applies not only to our products and services, but also to our processes and structures, as well as our costs,” he said.

No, you don’t!

Customers buy services / products from an organization and no customer has ever come in the front door and said, ‘Well, I just want you to know that I’ve heard you have a first-class payroll department, and because of that, I bypassed all your competitors to buy from you.’

Most (Okay - all) customers could care less about your payroll department, your new Agile approach to IT transformation, the quality of the cash registers, the health care benefits you offer employees, how much money you spent on the chairs in the executive reception area, or the new procedures you have for handling customer calls. These items (and most elements of a business) are just part of your standard operations. That is, they are the things you do and must have in order for your product / service to be considered a viable alternative by a customer. Standard elements of the business are not why customers choose one business over another, but they are the important table stakes to be in the game.

Virtually every organization (OK, every organization) can be separated into those areas that are standard and those areas that are potentially exceptional. Most of what is done, most days, by most employees constitutes the standard operations of the business.

• The standard elements of any organization MUST BE DONE. If you fail to meet the standard expectations (for your business) of your customers, then they will stop buying from your organization.

• The standard elements of any business MUST BE DONE WELL.

• However, the standard elements of any business need only be done at the MEDIAN expectation level relative to the comparison competitive set.

What constitutes these standard expectations is decided upon by the customer as the customer compares our offering to that of our competitors.

Unless management has unlimited funds & unlimited employee time available (a rare situation to say the least), then one must decide where to invest in an organization. Over investing on standard elements of the business is simply a waste of valuable time, money and mental firepower.

Only a few critical resources / capabilities constitute your competitive advantage. Organizations should strive to be the VERY BEST at those!