Every month or quarter, leaders in most organizations report on the state of business performance. We are strong proponents of taking an outcome-based approach to performance measurement and management. Best-in-class leaders focus on what’s happening both, inside and outside, of their company, to strengthen business performance. Optimize these four key “outside” factors to achieve greater success:
BCG studied the tenures of 7,000 CEOs worldwide to identify how they affected their companies’ business performance trajectories. The one success factor associated with high CEO performance across all contexts was this: a long-term, externally oriented approach to strategy. That is, they are more outside than inside focused.
Most leaders inherently understand this approach, which is why the 1989 commercial from United Airlines in which the CEO hands out tickets to his team to meet with customers still resonates today. If as a leader the majority of your working day, most every day, is spent addressing what’s going on internally with your organization, it may be time to re-allocate your energy and time. Give some thought to the last few weeks. How many of the meetings you attended, and the conversations you had, were with or about new and existing customers, partners, or competitors? How much time did you spend keeping a pulse on your industry and your market? If you answered not as much as you would have liked, then it’s time to make a change.
Four Focal Points of Business Performance Improve Competitiveness and Customer-Centricity
In our CEO conversation with Becky Taylor for the Ready, Set, Grow! Funnel Media program, she emphasized how critical it is for leaders to “maintain a 360-degree view, or an ‘up-periscope,’” in order to be able to adjust quickly, or as close to “real time” as possible.
Improving business performance takes regular review of your financial, operational, and customer data from various, disparate sources. The insights from this data is one essential part of having a complete view of your business, but you also really need to know your:
There is a common theme across all of these four key areas. Improving business performance takes data and a outside-in customer-cetnric, market and competitive focus. Investing more time in these four areas will enable you to balance your inside and outside focus, and positively impact business performance. Research by Deloitte and Touche found that customer-centric companies were 60% more profitable compared to companies that were not focused on the customer.
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