In this global business environment, the enterprises should win in their business to survive. However, how they will win is a big question since there are significant challenges of the enterprises that they need to eliminate. Limited sources, global recessions, unexpected costs, poor profit margins, poorly managed human resources, strict local laws & regulations, cultural distance and evolving trends. Either for non-profit or profit organizations, it is getting harder and harder to be “one-step in front” and be successful and efficient in operations. I believe that the winning enterprises are the successful enterprises in differentiating themselves for building competitive advantage under certain factors.
Factor 1-Building Communication among Stakeholders
The first factor is the clear, simple and strong communication relationships among the stakeholders who have the highest share in organization success. They are customers, employees and the suppliers who are the parts of the customer value chain. It is not easy to build and have a sustainable relationship among them but a well-established and shared organization culture which is built on goals, knowledge shared by the organization, respect and transparency. It is even worse to be successful in vertical organizations that are deep in level of management among functions.
Factor 2-Avoiding Internal Competition by Cross-Functional Teams
The second factor is the well-managed cross functional teams. They could build a strong relationship in the enterprises among stakeholders and prevent the internal competition between the departments. These teams consist of members from different departments who have different roles and hierarchical level in the enterprises. Their participation could create synergy in the teams and enrich the intellectual asset of the team.
The cross-functional teams could be oriented to different operational functions or projects or topics temporarily until the objective is achieved. These teams can discuss the tasks or activities related their business, find out the real problems and present ideas, experience and information to find remedies for the task. Even they can take decisions which can affect the whole organization.
The cross-functional teams brings flexibility to the enterprises and enhance the performance of generating on-time responses to the customer requirements. Each cross-functional team can be a member of another team which also empowers the richness of the knowledge and the communication among the teams. Cross-functional teams increase the teamwork and decrease the specialization within the organization that makes the organization to be horizontal and improve the focus of the enterprise in the communication and coordination within the enterprise.
The cross functional teams enable organizations to work as virtual teams in regardless of boundaries, countries and locations. By this way, the enterprises could operate in different regions in the world more efficiently by improving the operational costs, enhancing the organizational efficiency and communication between stakeholders. The enterprises could also collect the market-based knowledge effectively that could be transformed into organizational knowledge as an asset since the team members could share the information, experiences and ideas without any major discrepancy or communication fault.
Factor 3-Innovation Leadership and Trend Settling
The third factor is innovation-leaders or trend-makers which have the equal importance for the enterprises. The successful leadership needs an excellent skill of follow-up of the customers and the market segments. The successful leadership needs successful assessment of customer requests from the markets which should be followed by a good and effective business plan to generate innovative solutions to the meet customer satisfaction or even go beyond. The winning enterprises never quit innovation and go. They even share the results to the innovation to the entire organization to let the employees to feel satisfied and take greater steps to improve the capability of innovation.
Factor 4-Organizational Culture
The fourth important factor which is the main brick of the organization. It is the organizational culture. The winning companies believe that they will be more successful with the right person who is motivated. Southwest Airlines is a good sample for this manner. This organization believes that the excellent service can only be achieved by right people who have more importance than customers for the organization. The employees should believe that they are valuable, secured and they need to feel loyalty. When employees notice that their management is giving them value, secure their rights and treated them as their VIP customers, they also value their business and this strong attitude forms a strong and unbreakable organization culture with high norms, kind and family environment, strong loyalty to the organization and the customers which is resulted as excellent and continuous service.
The winning enterprises are “a step in-front” among their competitors since they build a strong organizational culture under effective leadership to satisfy the customers and the employees. The winning enterprises have the power of strong relationships. The winning enterprises assess and analyse the market needs and trends before creating innovative solutions. The winning enterprises settle trends as an innovation-leader by its lean, horizontal and effective organizational structure with its cross-functional teams.
Dr. Alp KARABAS
2020
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