| | By Mick James
There are few surer
ways to wealth than
picking winning
companies. A few years
ago one of the American
papers did an exercise
which suggested that if
you had continually
reinvested $100 in the
best performing sector
each year since 1900
your wealth would be
greater than the current
value of the planet and
everything and everybody
on it.
So what makes a
winning company? Why do
some firms consistently
outperform their
competition. It’s a far
from a facile question,
and one which fascinates
Professor Colin
Coulson-Thomas, not
least because the facile
answers often seem to
fail.
“You often find
companies who look at
their more successful
rivals and say, they’ve
got an inferior product,
their people aren’t as
good as ours how on
earth are they beating
us?” he says. “The
answer is clearly that
they are just better at
doing the things that
make a difference
without necessarily
being aware of it.”
Working out what
these differences are
has been the core theme
of a number of research | |
|
| | projects Coulson-Thomas
has carried out over the
past 20 years. Now the
research — which has
covered a number of
different industries and
activities has been
summarised in his latest
book Winning Companies:
Winning People
(Kingsham Press
£19.95). It’s a project
I’ve played a small part
in myself, having worked
on the Winning New
Business in Professional
Services.... The
methodology behind it is
as simple as it is
effective. A cunningly
designed questionnaire
looks at all stages of
and associated
activities around, say,
putting together a major
bid. The overall results
are merely interesting,
in the way that such
surveys are. But when
the most successful
companies are analysed
separately from the
least successful,
remarkable differences
appear, and it is these
“critical success
factors” that
Coulson-Thomas believes
companies should focus
on.
“People and products
are similar everywhere,
everyone gets access to
the same underlying
technology, they’re all
buying the same software
and recruiting from the
same business schools,” | |
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| | he says. “Why are some
companies winning
three-quarters of their
bids when all the other
factors are the same?”
From the research it
emerges that the crucial
differences revolve
around attitudes and
behaviour. I recall that
when we looked at the
consultancy industry,
the differences between
winners and losers
narrowed significantly
as the bid process
advanced to actual
pitching. Consultants,
it seemed, generally
knew what to do when
they had a formal chance
to present themselves to
a client with a project
on the table. The
winners were much more
adept at, and had a far
more positive attitude
to, early stage
activities like
networking. It is this
attitudinal aspect that
that can make winning
behaviour so difficult
to spot.
"In doing the
research we often found
that people don’t know
what they are winners
and losers at,” says
Coulson-Thomas. “Often
someone thinks they are
very good at doing
something when they are
quite bad with respect
to the total
population.”
Equally, he says,
companies can easily | |
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| | overlook the roots of
their success. “If you
look at any population
whether it’s lawyers or
teachers there’s always
a small number of
superstars, people who
do it differently and
exhibit more of the
winning behaviours,” he
says. ”But it’s amazing
how bad companies are at
knowing who their
superstars are — often
the winning behaviours
are not the ones that
firms encourage. The
superstars even get
penalized for not
following the rules and
procedures.”
This also explains
why so many
across-the-board
improvement initiatives
yield disappointing
results: “All these
companies spend a
fortune on getting good
at areas that don’t make
a difference,” he says.
“Another key finding is
that we always see
companies who lag behind
making enormous efforts
at getting people who
are good at something to
cope with the things
they are not good at,
rather than getting them
to do even better at
what they are good at.”
By contrast, getting
average performers to
adopt winning behaviours
is a relatively low-cost
enterprise.
“If you can define | |
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| | what it is the winners
do differently you can
put together a little
toolkit to make it
easier for people to do
their jobs,” he says.
“No client I’ve
recommended this to has
had to run a change
management programme for
their people: it makes
it easier for people to
excel and they want it
yesterday.”
While a lot of
inter-company
comparisons get bogged
down in questions of
metrics, performance
indicators and defining
best practice,
Coulson-Thomas believes
that this behavioural
approach offers a much
more practical way for
almost any company or
organisation to raise
its game.
“If the critical
differences are
attitudinal then almost
any business has the
potential to become a
winner,” he says. “There
isn’t an entrance ticket
or a magic bullet — for
most businesses anyone
can do well.”
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