Dan Schneider

Choosing the Right Discipline to Drive Your Business Performance
April 4, 2008

If you’ve followed my columns, you know that I believe very strongly in three things: Balance, Focus, and Discipline. In this series of articles, I’m going to help you pick the right discipline to maximize your business performance. Here’s a multiple choice question to help you get started:

To become a market leader, my business must be excellent in which of the following:

a)      Operational Efficiency;

b)      Product Leadership;

c)      Customer Intimacy;

d)      Only one of the above; or,

e)      A and B and C above.

Most people choose answer “e”. They spend long hours trying to be excellent in operational efficiency, product leadership, and customer intimacy. The result of all that time, effort and money? Mediocrity brought about by a lack of balance, focus, and discipline. 

So, what’s the correct answer? Well, it is “d”: only one of the above. Trying to be excellent in all three is a sure ticket to turf wars, organizational misalignment, recruitment of the wrong people, wasted resources, multiple vendor problems and frustrated customers. Trying to be excellent in everything is the business equivalent of trying to be all things to all people. When we try to do this, we tell the marketplace that we have no distinguishing characteristics; no features to brand; and no idea about how to separate ourselves from the crowd. Our message, in effect, is “Me too.” As a consequence, many of us have underperforming assets that compromise succession success.

Now, this doesn’t mean you don’t have to pay attention to all three disciplines. You certainly do! You have to be at least average or above in each discipline; but you can only be excellent in one.

Why? Because each discipline:

• Has a different description of the right people
• Organizes resources differently
• Has a different focus
• Requires a different balance point
• Requires a different type of leadership

Trying to pull all three of these disciplines requires the wisdom of Solomon, the patience of Job, the confidence of David and the courage of Daniel. That’s a tough act; and even those exceptional Level 5 Leaders that Jim Collins writes about wouldn’t try to pull it off. They resisted the temptation of universal excellence and settled instead for excellence in only one thing.

Next: How do the disciplines differ?

Posted by Dan Schneider on April 4, 2008 | Comments (0)