6 traits of business excellence

John Spence has 14 years experience working with senior leaders at more than 20 Fortune 500 firms and a number of America’s top private companies. He says he has "read and analyzed about 160,000 pages on best practices and winning strategies, and condensed this information to a single page of bullet points." You can access the entire PDF article here.

1. Vivid vision A clear and well-thought-out vision of what you are trying to create that is exceptionally well communicated to everyone involved.

For example, one company's vision is focused on building a superior TEAM that delivers real value through elegant SOLUTIONS for their customers and looks for appropriate GROWTH opportunities.

It must be communicated relentlessly to all stakeholders. Through emails, meetings, speeches, conference calls, corporate retreats, and other means, the vision needs to be repeated over and over again.

2. Best people Superior talents who are also masters of collaboration.

The only sustainable competitive advantages left are innovation and superior customer service: both of which come from extremely talented people.

It is also essential to keep in mind that talent that does not play well with others is not talent. Your top people have to be just as good on teams as they are on their own.

3. Performance-oriented culture One that demands flawless operational execution, encourages constant improvement and innovation, and completely refuses to tolerate mediocrity or lack of accountability.

Great companies do not tolerate mediocrity. They set clear, ambitious, realistic goals and high standards of performance, and then hold people 100 percent accountable for meeting those standards and delivering on the goals.

4. Robust communication Open, honest, frank and courageous, both internally and externally.

The two key skills superb communicators demonstrate are focused listening and asking superior questions.

Great companies do everything in their power to maximize the Voice Of the Customer (VOC), asking questions and listening to what the market and their real customers are saying. It is a hard and fast rule of business: Whoever owns the VOC owns the market.

5. Sense of urgency The strong desire to get the important things done while never wasting time on the trivial.

To be effective at disciplined execution, the only cure is process. The leader must implement a detailed system—a defined and repeatable process for identifying, clarifying, prioritizing, assigning responsibility, implementing, reviewing and rewarding against specific goals and high standards of professionalism. In other words, what gets measured (and rewarded and punished for) gets done.

6. Extreme customer focus Owning the voice of the customer and delivering what customers consider truly valuable.

Create a set of clear, specific, measurable and observable customer service behaviors, actions and deliverables; these must be quantifiable and objective, and are most powerful when developed by the employees who will be responsible for delivering the actual service—based on what the customer identifies as superb service in their eyes.