Pushing Harder Toward Improvement Even When Dominating an Industry
For a company that leads an industry, it can be easy for complacency to set in. A company that dominates its competition to such an extent that their catching up seems impossible can easily succumb to lethargy. That deadly inclination, in fact, has proved to many companies throughout history just how precarious their positions actually always were.
This is, in some respects, less of a danger than it used to be, though. Shareholders today are insistent upon steadily improving results, with most boards of directors respecting this fact and doing their best to deliver, no matter what it takes. There is also a growing awareness among corporate leaders that no company, however apparently dominant, ever really reaches a peak that cannot be improved upon and surmounted.
Lean training experts, for example, point to plenty of evidence that shows that even the best-run companies can typically do better. Continuous Improvement plan efforts throughout the recent past and across a range of industries show how leading organizations have nonetheless steadily become more efficient and capable.
Relatively few companies, for instance, stress the workplace arrangements that are so critical to the output of their employees. what is a continuous improvement model that have been tested and proven around the world show how adjusting the environments workers work in can have an impressive effect, right from the start, on what they are capable of.
Even once such fundamentals have been taken care of, there are often ways of continuing to move forward. Lean training programs today show how some of the most efficient companies around have nonetheless found new ways of reducing waste. As technology pushes forward and new opportunities arise, the only way to stay abreast of these developments is to be constantly looking to improve.
For those who do so successfully, the rewards can be large. Too many big, dominant companies become unwieldy as a result, turning into lumbering things that lack the edge that made them great in the first place. Smaller, leaner competitors, even when they seem less capable in basic ways, are therefore often better poised to pivot and seize new opportunities as they arise.
Committing to continuous improvement instead, and making it a fundamental part of organizational culture, is the best way of staying clear of this danger. Companies that never stop focusing on improvement even as they stand atop their industries stand the best chance of all of going on, in the future, to even greater things.
