Many a times, organizations focus on too many things at the same time. This dilutes the focus and, in their attempt, to bring the best in every aspect of business, they fail at delivering the high-quality product at lowest cost. Is there a way to strategize the business processes in a way such that by focusing on certain key organizational capabilities towards having an advantage in business excellence?
What is Organizational Capability?
Organizational Capability can be defined as strategies and processes which will drive the business success to bring meaningful outcomes. This ensures that effective business strategy is around the key capabilities that will bring valuable returns of time, effort and resources that are being utilized.
These organizational capabilities allow organizations to be sensitive and future-ready for fulfilling customer needs. These capabilities are a bundle of skills, abilities, processes and expertise of an organization. It involves investment in staffing, training, communication, compensation and many more human resources aspects. These components are aligned to accomplish work targets.
Key Organizational Capabilities to Choose from
It may not be possible to have a comprehensive list of organizational capabilities since every organization comes with its exclusive requirements. Yet this concise list of 7 organizational capabilities may help you in creating your roadmap towards strategic advantage and business excellence.
Resources. Resources are one of the foremost requisites of capability building for an organization. Timely investment in quality resources allows you to build teams which are self-motivated, driven with commitment and drive leadership at different levels within an organization. Attracting competent people, keeping them motivated and retaining committed ones paves the success pathway of any organization. Also assigning sufficient resources to the task or modifying expectations ensures that the resources are neither exploited nor exhausted.
Shared Targets. Capability building revolves around competence, resources, cross-functionality, capacity, strategy and more. Their interconnected nature demands immense clarity about the laid objectives and outcomes. Hence, it is critical to share targets with the entire team which sets the pace and ensures momentum in the right direction. It also requires reviewing the set target and realigning to keep them realistic and achievable.
Strategy Alignment. Have you defined your business / organizational strategy? What is your key focus to engage your customers? Are you focusing on best product quality or you are targeting a low budget segment? Defining your business strategy early helps you build a framework around it. This also helps in defining organizational culture and aligning resources with the vision and mission of the organization.
Brand Identity. Building brand identity and sustaining it ensures that both the key entities involved, the customers and the employees, are associated with a positive brand image and cherishing experiences of the organization. Ask this question to create a strong brand identity, “What are the key points / features which our customers admire? Also ensure the drift happening in the environment and industry proactively to live up to customers expectations without losing their confidence.
Performance Accountability. An organization’s capability is built around its employees. Performance accountability ensures that employees take individual responsibility for achieving targets and goals and do not leave any scope for failure in fulfilling the goals. This requires a balance of tools utilized in measuring and managing performance; and compensation and benefits for acknowledging their efforts and contribution towards organizational success.
Continuous Learning. No matter how good your start was, the expectations need to be met consistently and ongoingly. If new ideas are not pumped into an organization, it loses its charm and engagement with time. Hence an organization needs to engage itself into research and development, market research of competitors, experimentation, talent acquisition and continuous improvement. This also involves training and development of existing resources and willingness to adopt new improved business practices.
Leadership. Leaders are not just the people at the top. These are visionaries aligned with the organization’s vision and embedded with the organization’s core purpose of existence. They establish a clear leadership brand through their exclusive approach in implementing the organizational strategies. They are unstoppable in their approach and bounce back from failures taking their team along with them. This also demands a backup resource pool for your key talent resources.
By assessing the driving forces ahead of time, it is possible to successfully adapt organizational models and strategies which will sharpen organizational capabilities and fulfil expectations of the management, employees and consumers.
