"The best-performing companies worry less about performance and more about their
organizational capabilities" (Bititci, 2015).
To an extent, this can be true. I believe that any TRULY successful company needs to move their
focus from strictly looking at numbers to looking at areas such as employee satisfaction, customer
satisfaction, learning capabilities, innovation, and operations. Income, sales, and product numbers
are not the only thing that dictate the success of a business. When we look at the informational
spread sheets that are given to us as students to evaluate areas such as employee satisfaction and
business environment, we are not just given numbers. A company can easily fail due to high
turnover rates, bad customer service, legal issues, or bad marketing to just list a few examples.
Culture, capabilities, and performance are interconnected in such a way that if one area is non
substantive than other areas will fail. In past courses concepts such as innovation we evaluated and
how companies approached innovation often was a significant sign of future failure or success.
Environments that did not encourage creativity and idea sharing were often those who saw less
progress. A comparison from a class that comes to mind was the company 3M versus automobile
manufacturers. 3M has an openly innovative environment for their employees, and this has been
what has led to inventions such as post-it notes! Whereas most automobile manufacturers have a
similar hierarchy which includes one person from each department (technology, design,
manufacturing, etc.) and a singular project manager. These companies come up with incremental
innovations that are small changes rather than brand new products. These companies tend to have
much different cultures.
Company A has a fairly good performance record with educated employees that receive multiple
training oppurtunities. Their turnover rate is twelve percent which is lower than the area average
(fifteen percent) as seen in the other company’s fact sheet. There are multiple trainings offered and
they are updated regularly. Customer return rate is high and new customer influx is at twenty-two
percent. Their customer service and safety rating area above average. This indicates a cohesive
culture. They have also been in business since 1981, showing consistency in growth which is a win
for numbers. Customers and employees are satisfied which means that their internal and external
business environments are at least decent.
Company B has a higher turnover rate among their employees and communicate having difficulty
maintaining compensation rises. They also only offer two trainings for their employees meaning that
they do not value continued education for employee and customer satisfaction and safety. Their
safety rating is low and customer service is lacking. Customers have complained about the customer
service and cleanliness of the airline, two very important areas in today’s world. The new president
of the company has expressed a desire to be an innovator instead of a follower. However, the
company’s current culture is not that that inspires or rewards innovation. This points to failure more
so than numbers.
