Noble Advisors
  • Linkedin
  • Twitter
  • Home
  • About
    • Mind of Darwin: Academic Foundation
    • Mind of Darwn: Early Business Experience
    • Mind of Darwin: Mid Career
    • Mind of Darwin: Later Years
    • Heart of Darwin
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Articles
    • Notes on Noble Business
  • Speaking
    • Recent Keynotes
    • Audiences and Sponsoring Organizations
    • Participant Feedback
  • Executive Programs
    • Concepts Developed
    • Themes of My Work
  • Executive Counsel
  • Blog
  • Contact
info@NobleAdvisors.com
Home» Notes on Noble Business » Business Strategy » Building Competitive Advantage -Three Keys: Introducing the Noble Enterprise Pathway to Success program

Building Competitive Advantage -Three Keys: Introducing the Noble Enterprise Pathway to Success program

January 24, 2012 - Business Strategy, Executive Management, Leadership, Profitability, Trends
0

Let’s talk “Competitive Advantage”. What makes you and/or your business better than others? If you can answer that question – and convey that answer to others, you’re bound to increase your likelihood of success dramatically. I’d like to offer three keys for you to consider:

Key #1: Working Hard

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But how many people and businesses just don’t do this. They are lazy, or don’t dot the i’s and cross the t’s, or don’t go the extra mile.

What does “working hard” mean in everyday work? Here are some things people or businesses that work hard do:

  1. They are physically fit and active – so they have the energy to work hard
  2. They get excited about the challenge of business and throw themselves into it “whole hog”
  3. They get tremendous satisfaction from doing not just a “good job” but an excellent one
  4. They don’t cut corners, but rather do a thorough job
  5. They marshal their time effectively, and don’t have “down time” – they’re always working on something important.

There was a time when working hard was enough to get ahead, especially if you worked harder than the competition. But now that’s no longer enough. Since we arrived in the Information Age, there’s more we need to be excellent at – but while still working hard.

Key #2: Working Smarter

In the latter part of the 20th Century, the business world discovered the power of the Mind. Concepts such as the Learning Organization (Senge: The Fifth Discipline) and Intellectual Capital (Thomas Stewart) showed that corporate success was all about mining the power of Mind. We observed that those who expanded the Mind and used it well were the ones succeeding.

Jack Welch, then CEO of GE, said, “We are trying to differentiate GE competitively by raising as much intellectual and creative capital from our work force as we possibly can. That is a lot tougher than raising financial capital, which a strong company can find in any market in the world.”

So therefore, to succeed it’s imperative to Work Smarter, but what does that mean? Here are some steps for doing that.

  1. Relish learning – new things in your field or industry, but also learning outside your field. Why? Because by expanding your mind, you may well see new ways of succeeding.
  2. Stand back from the things you do – and ask yourself (and others), How can we do that better?
  3. Get training (and arrange for your people to get training) to improve their skills.
  4. Periodically, set out to improve a process that you do repetitively. That’s to break through the natural bonds of tradition and uniformity.
  5. Take on a completely different responsibility, just so you learn it. Similarly, rotate your people through different functions, so they learn more about the various aspects of the company.

Working Smarter, along with Working Hard, is key to success. But we’re finding increasingly that they are not enough. One more ingredient is needed now for uncommon success.

Key #3: Working Nobly

The first two keys could be said to be about the Human Doer and the Human Thinker. This third key is about the Human Being. Key #2 taps Mind power. Key #3 taps Heart power, which means who we are, and how we relate to others. Whereas Key #2 concentrates on building and utilizing Intellectual Capital, Key #3 focuses on building and utilizing Spiritual Capital, the human spirit that is so often underutilized in companies.

Here’s how one highly successful CEO, Herb Kelleher (of Southwest Airlines) put it: “I’ve tried to create a culture of caring for people in the totality of their lives, not just at work. There’s no magic formula. It’s like building a giant mosaic – It takes thousands of little pieces….The intangibles are more important than the tangibles. Someone can go out and buy airplanes from Boeing and ticket counters, but they can’t buy our culture, our esprit de corps.”

It’s about the company being a collection of human energies, about the quality as well as quantity of those energies, and how they flow through people to create value. Since that draws on Heart energy, it’s about purpose, joy, connection and caring.

In my book NOBLE ENTERPRISE: The Commonsense Guide to Uplifting People and Profits, I write about nobility and identify five pillars that are built into a noble enterprise that help it succeed. These are:

  1. Greater Purpose
  2. Ethical Values
  3. Human Growth
  4. Freedom within Structure
  5. Unity Mindset

If you can build these five “pillars” into your own work and into your company (while still also building keys number 1 and 2), you’ll succeed far beyond the norm, and may well become the leader in the field/industry.

Introducing the Noble Enterprise Pathway (NEP) Program to Success

To help you and your organization build and utilize these five pillars, so that you can strengthen your competitive advantage, I developed the NEP program, consisting of several working sessions for groups of employees. It’s based on the successful seminar we have led for several years at the Olin Business School’s Executive Program at Washington U in St Louis.

For information go to the website, and/or contact me directly.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Categories

  • About
  • Breakthrough
  • Business Economics
  • Business Strategy
  • Executive Counsel
  • Executive Counsel 2
  • Executive Education
  • Executive Management
  • Heart of Darwin
  • Leaders
  • Leadership
  • Mind of Darwin
  • Noble Enterprise
  • Notes on Noble Business
  • Personal Growth
  • Private-Family
  • Profitability
  • Programs
  • Publications
  • Research
  • Societal Evolution
  • Speaking
  • The Common Good
  • Trends
  • Welcome

Blog Archive

  • July 2020
  • April 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • August 2019
  • February 2019
  • December 2018
  • September 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • February 2018
  • July 2016
  • May 2016
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • July 2015
  • May 2015
  • January 2015
  • October 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • October 2011
  • August 2011
  • April 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • March 2010
  • January 2010
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
Copyright 2018 Noble Advisors
  • Home
  • About
  • Publications
  • Speaking
  • Executive Programs
  • Executive Counsel
  • Blog
  • Contact