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28 Nov 2006 15:54:41
A new book examining why
some individuals and companies are winners is being launched by a visiting
Professor at the University
of Bedfordshire.
Winning Companies: Winning People, The differing approaches of winners and losers is written by Colin Coulson-Thomas, Professor of Competitiveness at the University.
He has researched over 4,000 organisations, from smaller firms to major corporations, to examine how average performers can become superstars and companies can boost performance and their commercial success rate.
He looked particularly at why some people and groups are so much more effective than others at undertaking equivalent tasks in similar circumstances, including areas of competitive bidding, building customer relationships, pricing, purchasing and creating and exploiting know-how.
Prof Coulson-Thomas found: “Companies that excel at certain activities usually perform badly at others. Where companies adopt winning ways in all areas, overall productivity quickly increases in leaps and bounds.
“A disturbing aspect of the findings is the massive expenditure of money and management time on people, activities, technologies and widely adopted fads that do not relate to critical success factors for competing and winning.
“Most companies are also poor judges of their relative performance in the areas examined and are unaware of the reasons why they are not more successful or who their superstars are.”
His research found in a large majority of companies training and development activities focus on what people are not good at, rather than help them to achieve more in the areas in which they excel. Employees are encouraged to address weaknesses and concentrate upon activities they do not enjoy, rather than build upon their strengths and do what they enjoy doing and do best.
Prof Coulson-Thomas concludes every company in the research programme could boost its overall performance, by building more critical success factors into certain processes and adopting more winning approaches in areas of under achievement.
The book points out many underachievers are not dissatisfied with their own performance as they are unaware of what could be done differently to obtain better results.
He added: “Winning behaviours should be introduced where required. More thinking and less mechanical approaches are needed.
“It is encouraging that winning and losing approaches can be so clearly distinguished. The former can be emulated and the latter avoided. Personal and workgroup productivity and corporate performance can be transformed to deliver commercial success for organisations and both financial rewards and personal satisfaction for individuals.”
Winning Companies; Winning People, the differing approaches of winners and losers is available from Kingsham Press priced £19.95. To order a copy telephone 01243 779378 or visit www.cotoco.com
Latest news» 2006» Nov» New book examines how companies and individuals can become winners
