The New Key Success Factors to Create An Excellence Advantage

When I attended business school, several generations ago, one of the key teachings was the ability to identify the key success factors (KSFs) of a business.  By understanding the key success factors and focussing attention on them you could, the theory went, make the business more successful.  In those days the key success factors were such things as low cost of production, proprietary technology or knowledge, distribution or pricing.  If your business or organization could master the key success factors you could dominate your industry.

We live in a different time now.  In an era of instant access to knowledge through the Internet, Google and Social Networks; information and knowledge is ubiquitous.  A competitor can have the same information and can learn as fast as we can.  In an age where finance is global, the ability to move manufacturing to lower cost markets has significantly reduced North American production capacity.  The competitive advantages of old no longer work.

I believe there are five new Key Success Factors.  I believe by mastering these five KSFs each of us as individuals and in communities of excellence can succeed in a new manner. What makes them different, is that they are personal KSFs that anybody can adopt and be successful.  More importantly, these can be scaled to the organizational level as well.  An Excellence Advantage is built with these five New KSFs in mind.

The five are:

1. Creativity,
2. The Experience,
3. Relationships,
4. Personal Leadership, and
5. Sustainability.

Creativity:  Creativity, and it's half brother Innovation are critical to success in today's economic environment.  With ubiquitous information, it is the ability to manipulate, interpret, analyse and reuse in creative and innovative ways that contribute to an excellence advantage.  Don't compete - create!  Find new ways of interacting with clients, customers and stakeholders.  Creativity is the ability to see something in your imagination and bring it to reality.  Creativity is an extraordinary and wonderful gift, and as human beings we all have it. 

The Experience:  We now live in the Experience Economy.  Our clients and customers no longer want to buy goods and services, they want to be involved in an experience that enriches them. So often we do not examine the experience we are giving.  Experience is more than just customer service, it is all the design elements and details in how we interact, interface and communicate.  In the experience economy we create opportunities for conversations. The Experience is the product. Entrepreneurs and organizations that truly understand this are unique and generate raving fans and tribes of supporters. 

Relationships: If Experience is the product, then Relationship is the distribution system. This KSF is built on the ability to create unique one on one, one to many relationships.  The Internet, social media and other technologies gives us the ability to have incredible one on one conversations with a multitude of people.  Building relationships builds the trust we need to have to conclude a transaction.  

Personal Leadership:  Seth Godin, in his book Tribes, tells us of the world's need for all of us to be leaders.  To move from a management role to a leadership position.  The tribe can be small, or it can be large, but we need to take personal care to lead in areas of our passion.  Personal leadership means taking responsibility for what goes on in our lives and with those around us.  Anyone can be a leader.  You don't have to be the boss to be the leader, in fact in most cases the boss is not the leader in many organizations. One of the greatest books on leadership was written around 540 AD by St. Benedict, called The Rule. Reading the Rule of St Benedict opens one up to the real meaning of listening, being responsible, being reasonable and also being humble.  Personal leadership demands humility. 

Sustainability:  The last KSF is sustainability.  The world needs each of us to find ways to lower our ecological footprint while maintaining our financial, emotional and spiritual sustainability.  Sustainability is not just a good thing to do for the environment, it is a great way to do business and reflects your personal leadership commitment. 

At the core of An Excellence Agenda are Communities of Excellence, practising the New KSFs to develop and create an Excellence Advantage.  In future posts we'll link all the elements together into a management framework.