According to C.S. Lewis, understanding ourselves and the universe we live in lies in the realisation that people know what to do and yet don’t do it. This is certainly also true in business. How many times have you heard it said “ If only everyone will do as he/she is supposed to”. We all suffer from it, we know what to do, yet time and again, daily tasks, the regular meetings, emergencies, fighting fires, immediate priorities etc. fill our time and we are left at the end of the day with the frustration that we have worked our butts off, yet it feels like we have not achieved anything, or at least none of what we planned to do.   

My search for a solution to this spans quite a time period in my career and hence once I found a true working solution, I became an ardent advocate of the cure, simply because nothing else speaks as convincingly as results.   Although there may be many different views as to what constitute excellence in business, it should however be reasonable to expect that we could all agree that it must be able to build an organisation’s ability to execution in an enduring way.

It often, amazes me to see how relatively much time and money are spent by businesses on developing strategy, compared to ensuring it gets executed correctly. So often after an extensive strategy planning session, it’s being said “Now let’s get back to work”. What should constitute a new way of doing the business is often not given enough attention by really finding out how to go about it at every level. The plan, how smart it may be, is often crippled by not fleshing out from all employees (as wide as possible) the question “What will prevent us?”

The Balanced Score Card from dr. Kaplan and Norton did a lot in terms of solving this dilemma, by aligning policies and practises with goals, however, the terminology seems over the top for many and in practise, alignment is often carried out only at senior levels without a real understanding of what’s at stake at all levels in the organisation. It further lacks the methodology to ensure it becomes a daily action without being cumbersome in the administration thereof.

The answer as described by Gary Harpst in his book Six Disciplines for Excellence (ISBN 0-9748587-0-6), however is far more encompassing but requires discipline and perseverance.  It is based on a survey of over 300 successful small businesses and on the organisations’ ability to achieve sustained growth and profitability.  The Six Disciplines is thus really an integrated system of best practises that has proven to deliver results. It consists of daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual tasks/controls. Its beauty is in the fact that instead of being an administration nightmare, it becomes the guide for goal oriented work on a daily basis. 

The survey shows what separated the top performing companies’ vs. the poor performing:

1.      Strength of leadership team

2.      Ability to attract and retain high quality people

3.      Disciplined approach to business

4.      Strategic use of technology

5.      Effective use of trusted relationships

The poorly performing counterparts failed by sharing the following barriers to excellence:

1.      Poorly understood strategy

2.      Weak strategy execution

3.      Unchecked organisational disorder (entropy)

4.      Lack of systematic approach

5.      Impractical Implementation Methods

6.      Unengaged people

Realising the above and taking the corrective action in a disciplined, systematic fashion, such as to ensure the development of a new self sustaining culture within the organisation is what the Six Disciplines is all about. What makes it further unique, is that the methodology ensures nothing is done simply superficially, rather thoroughness on the basics is what ensures the development of new habits.

The Six disciplines includes elements of strategic planning, quality management, business process automation, performance management and people management, but geared to only whats needed for companies with staff complements of 10 – 250. Above all, this method is an integrated learning system. It is a systematic way for the whole organisation to learn how to set, and more importantly, execute strategy.   

Typical implementation spans a complete financial period (annual), but once done correctly, it establishes itself as a new culture in the organisation with unsurpassed benefits.