Patterns of business excellence

Most companies have attempted a significant number of improvement initiatives such as total quality, re‐engineering, restructuring and teams, with very mixed success. In many cases these initiatives have been adopted without being part of an improvement strategy, but as part of a series of ad hoc decisions. This paper explores the deeper “pre‐conditions” that explain the variance in success of such improvement attempts and resulting performance changes. We describe and illustrate a holistic management system and set of guiding principles that are common to the world’s best companies. The system comprises closely connected elements of the integrated improvement strategy, action plans, performance management, external benchmarks, and rewards for all employees. Further, this system and the actions within it are guided by a set of principles that are common to “best” companies. This approach to management is different in kind to the ad hoc approach, and executives can assess themselves against the system and the principles framework. They can then set up an action plan to permanently change the state of their organisation and achieve a significantly improved likelihood that improvement initiatives will work sustainably.