"World Class" is often something that is used to describe a lot of things, people and organizations. Often without any real sense of how we get to the position of being world class or how we measure this. I once asked a friend of mine how they would describe this and they came up with an example of Marks and Spencer's underwear simple because the elastic doesn't break!! Humorous maybe, but not that helpful. John Spence however, the well known trusted adviser, consultant and author, may just have come up with something that helps to bring an often desired status (world class) to a tangible level by using an equation to describe what companies must focus on to become truly world class.
This is as follows:
(T+C+ECF) x DE = world class
So what does the equation mean? Each portion is a key area that you must focus on if you want to get to a world class status.
T = a focus on talent in your organization: ensuring that you attract, recruit, retain and develop talent;
C = a focus on culture in your organization: As Peter Drucker said "Culture eats Strategy for breakfast" so you have to determine what type of culture you want and the start to build it;
ECF = an extreme customer/consumer focus: without an extreme focus you get standard and therefore you need to think about why you do what you do, then how, then what - in that order so you can build an extreme, daily focus on customers.
Bringing these three together then creates a new outcome that has to be mastered. And that is DE....learning the discipline of execution. Getting the important, high value things done that need to be done.