Tom Peters Company Summer Research Project

A few months ago, Robert H. Thompson was kind enough to invite my  participation in a summer research project conducted by the Tom Peters Company.  Turns out, I was one of 143 respondents from 34 countries who completed a 50 question Excellence Audit survey designed to “uncover any common traits in what business people see as the most pressing improvement priorities as companies face up to the slow haul out of the recession.”  As promised, I received a copy of the results last week and have been granted permission, with appropriate attribution of course, to share some of the results with you.

For an overview and more detail about the Future Shape of the Winner (FSW) business excellence model and the Excellence Audit survey, visit Tom Peters Company.

In short, “the main business improvement focus areas that were selected by all the survey groups (the whole group as well as subsets of the group) were, in Future Shape of the Winner parlance, “Talent Leadership”, (Customer) “Experience”, “Architecture” and “Execution”. Within these focus areas, four Excellence Audit characteristics were picked out by all the survey groups as priorities for improvement action:

o” Characteristic 9. Leaders here invest their time in finding, deploying, encouraging, and protecting our intra-preneurs, groundbreakers, and champions of change. These people are the architects of our future success. (29% improvement)

o “Characteristic 34. We exploit the latest IT and Web-based systems to deliver our products and services more efficiently, to provide a more intimate and personalised service, and to expand our offering through new online products, features, and/or services for our clients/customers.
(29% improvement)

o “Characteristic 40. We use state of the art IT systems to ensure all relevant knowledge and management information is accessible at every desk/laptop. (27% improvement)

o “Characteristic 50. We use latest developments in IT and Web-based technologies to constantly improve our business processes and methodologies. We can honestly say, “If it can be done using the new technologies, then we do it that way!” (28% improvement)”

*The percentage you see after each of the priorities is called the aspiration gap, referring to the gap between the current situation and a desired future.

I encourage you to visit the Tom Peters web site and learn more about this interesting work.  In the meantime, please share your thoughts on the priorities listed here and how important they may be to the future of your organization.

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