Small Business Blog from Atlantic Canada

I am "CA" Atreya (PMP, MBA), the author of this blog. I help businesses in Atlantic Canada achieve their BHAG successfully. You may subscribe to this blog using a feed reader (RSS).

Note: For the first article in this series please go to Issues in Strategy Implementation.

Kaizen: Japanese for “change for the better” translates to “continuous improvement”. But how can you improve if you do not know how you are faring now? Improve from what to what? Improvement necessitates comparison. If your organization is to perform activities across the value chain effectively and efficiently, you need a benchmark. The benchmark may be the best-in-the-industry organization; or it could also be against your own self.

Remember Surpetition? Surpetition is a term coined by Edward de Bono. The word competition means “seeking together”. This means accepting that you are running in the same race as your competitors. How your organization reacts is largely determined by the behaviour of your competitors. There is a need to keep up with competitors in terms of price, quality, distribution, promotion, product differentiation and marketing initiatives. Surpetition means “surpassing oneself” or “seeking above” or creating your own race. It means creating new “value monopolies” - value monopolies that become your competitive advantage. If value is significant, then your advantage is sustainable. But Surpetition is highly dependent on concepts and that requires creative thinking.

Do you know what your objective of continuous improvement is? In what areas of your business are you looking for continuous improvement? Is it to improve efficiencies in production? Or is it to improve quality of your product? Speaking of which, isn’t that what we all want as business leaders? We say we want to deliver quality products or services to clients. Don’t you? In fact the “Q” in IQI Strategic Management stands for quality. What does it mean in the business environment today? There were days when you could differentiate yourself from your competition by saying you have a quality product. But today customers expect quality and is a norm at any organization worth its salt. As the quality of products and services are taken for granted, customers look for difference. Tom Peters once said, “I am no longer interested in excellence. I am interested in what is different.” We are all beyond traditional competition because of over-supply. You need to stand out.

Look at the large number of blogs itself. I have to search with a magnifying glass to find blogs with quality content - content that I can derive value from; and content that I can bring value to. So I need to be different to stand out. And so should you. Lean production, agile manufacturing, TQM is all nice and dandy but everyone else is doing it. Successful organizations move away from competition by developing a different way of doing business. It takes eccentricity to beat competition. Dare to be different but keep the strategy in mind; keep your vision focused on your objectives.

It is important to keep an eye on competition. But for continuous improvement your competition should be against yourself. You should benchmark against yourself. Identifying and implementing areas of improvement is a journey and not a destination. When you compare your organization with your competitor, you are essentially comparing apples and oranges. Your resources are not the same, employee skills may not be the same, leadership and management thinking is not the same. So why would you compare yourself against your competition? Assuming you have done your research, you know your target segment and you know your product or service. Better it. Period! For example, it typically takes five days to convert corn to ethanol. Can it be done in three?

The way your organization currently works is the current standard. Keeping in mind your strategic objectives, what can be done to improve on this standard? That is the question you need to be asking yourself. Your employees play a key role. They have to be motivated enough to do this. Applying the concept of surpetition to continuous improvement in your organization will enable to change the rules of the game. And changing the rules of the game will propel your organization into a leadership position. Isn’t that the objective of initiating continuous improvement programs?

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