It is now established beyond doubt that more than 50% of credit for Apple’s success is its never seen before level of the practice of Operational Excellence. Its CEO and erstwhile COO, Cook was always just around to come to the forefront and make the world realize that despite all copying of Apple’s products and features, its competitors have missed the real lever by a huge margin.
During complex and chaotic business environment organizations need to bet on business innovation. However, without leveraging operations in such an environment you can not be there for long, since the business environment is changing so fast and unpredictably (the New Normal).
The reality is that you can have a grand strategy and excellent products, when they go wrong you would definitely lose heart. But in these days, if your operational performance is lower than breakthrough levels, you lose your business and position day in day out. And your strategy and products can not take you any where.
Very few leaders and managers have this insight of the severe limitations poor operational practices place on the growth of the organization. Indeed, some of the organizations have recognized the edge operational excellence provides to business innovation in real time, and are now committing to leverage Operations for sustainable and scalable growth. ‘
‘The Time it takes to Change’ is increasingly becoming critical to organizations these days. Latest in the realization of Operational Excellence is HP, the IT behemoth that is keeping all its other initiatives on back burner till it improves its operational practices. Its CEO Meg Whitman said recently, “Operational excellence should have become a way of life.”
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