Who are the Indian Benchmarks for Performance Excellence?

Indian Benchmarks for Performance Excellence - Qimpro

Performance Excellence

Over the past three decades, Quality Management has matured from Process Excellence to Performance Excellence.

The parallel is the quality of a solo musician versus the collective performance of an orchestra. Crescendo!

The results of Performance Excellence are a rainbow of:

  • Corporate governance
  • Customer satisfaction
  • Employee satisfaction
  • Societal satisfaction
  • Shareholder satisfaction
  • Operational efficiency.

These results are a function of inter-dependent processes involving:

  • Leadership
  • Strategic planning
  • Customer focus
  • Employee focus
  • Knowledge management
  • Process management.

As you will realize, you know all this. What is missing is structured thinking.

Structured Thinking

Compound the situation with two other facts:

  • Product life cycles are shrinking
  • Attention spans of leaders are also shrinking.

As a result we need to perform Better / Faster / Cheaper / Different. In other words, Performance Excellence 2.0

In order to succeed in this scenario the key structured thinking processes are:

  • Process Improvement – using left-brain logical thinking
  • Process Innovation – using right-brain creative thinking
  • Benchmarking for Best Practices – through cross-industry research.

Indian Benchmarks

You may ask who has done this? There are a few sterling examples: Mahindra Auto & Tractors; Bajaj Auto; Sankara Nethralaya; Aravind Eye Hospital.

The common thread that runs through the four is the role of leadership: Dr Pawan Goenka; Rajiv Bajaj; Dr S S Badrinath; Dr Govindappa Venkataswamy.

Each is an icon for disruptive thinking. Each has delivered Performance Excellent Results. In spite of a turbulent business environment.

All have added value to the brand: Made in India.

Random Thoughts:

  1. I have seen Mahindra and Bajaj retail outlets in Africa and Asia. With pride.
  2. I have consulted at the Asian benchmark, Bumrungrad Hospital, Bangkok, where their management wished to benchmark the Best Practices of Sankara Netrhralaya.
  3. Aravind Eye Hospital is a global benchmark for Productivity and Customer Focus.





6 thoughts on “Who are the Indian Benchmarks for Performance Excellence?”

  • Sir you have beautifully stated the Leadership and Top Management Functions in all Organisations of what they are supposed to do – Roles, responsibilty and Accountabilty . A MISSION for TOP MANAGEMENT for all times

  • Core value of “Managing for innovation” needs to embedded in beliefs and behaviours of workforce if organization wishes to achieve its stretch goals. Creative adoption of best practices could lead to breakthrough performance. There is a lot to learn from organizations mentioned in this blog.

    • Glad you agree Rahul.
      The FOUNDATION for Performance Excellence involves three elements:
      1.: Leadership (Walk your talk)
      2. Strategic Planning (Vision deployment)
      3. Customer Focus (External; Internal; Society; Shareholder)

      There are other organizations that I have not mentioned in the blog:
      These three elements seed creative thinking in an organization.

  • Are performance excellence results directly co-related to quality leadership than brand. For example, many reputed brands (without naming them) have lost performance excellence results as and when poor leaders have taken charge. It seems to come back when quality leadership is back in charge.

    Is product life cycle shrinking due to excessive marketing than better quality products and services !

    • As I understand, Branding is a slow process of earning positive mind-share.. Earning trust. However, it can be destroyed overnight owing to poor governance, poor safety practices, and poor environmental practices. All these areas must be owned by the top leadership.
      Once a brand suffers, the road to recovery is painful and long.

      Quality is a prerequisite to enter a market. with differentiating features. In today’s business environment it is easy to replicate a competitor’s design. Thus, we stand the threat of being commoditized and losing market share. Consequently, the life cycle of our products shrink.

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