Your competitor knows your best practices – Better than you!
How many market leaders actually know their resident Best Practices? The answer is most likely to be “Don’t know”. However, there is a high probability that their competitors do…formally or informally!
In a cruel competitive world, what is the aim of one’s competitors? The answer is “To nullify your strengths and thereby commoditize your Best Practices”. In so doing, competitors tarnish a market leader’s branding that is significantly dependent on sustained resident Best Practices.
So the solution is to innovate resident Best Practices continually. But innovation has its own fuzziness. To associate Innovation it with Best Practices appears alien!
In my view, innovating resident Best Practices is the only way to survive in a competitive world.
How?
Innovating your Best Practices is not rocket science. In broad terms it involves 9 clear steps:
1. Develop a customer focused Vision
2. Identify the key processes that will take you to your Vision. (Don’t be surprised if they turn out to be primarily generic processes)
3. Map each process and establish its efficiency in terms of cost; and effectiveness in terms of customer delight
4. Harvest the Best Practices resident in each process
5. For each generic Best Practice, undertake a structured exercise for cross-industry ‘Benchmarking for Best Practices’
6. Ideate based on the lessons learned
7. Design innovate solutions for the shortlisted ideas
8. Implement the selected innovation in the resident Best Practice
9. Measure process efficiency and effectiveness.
Example: What was Dr. G. Venkataswamy’s vision when he started Arvind Eye Hospital?
“To mass-market cataract surgery the way hamburgers and pizzas are marketed by Mc Donald’s and Pizza Hut!”
Today, Arvind Eye Hospital is a global benchmark for throughput in cataract surgery.
How long? Will this benchmark be commoditized by competitors?
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