In Pursuit of World Class Excellence

One of the fundamental questions in the field of business performance improvement is how firms can achieve and sustain business excellence. With the irreversible trends of globalisation, this pursuit of business excellence will have to be staged on a global scenario if it is to be anything meaningful. Thus the concept of world class excellence was born.

However even though the awareness of the importance of world class excellence is much greater, incomplete understanding exists both in theory and in practice as to how to systematically create the world class excellence in any industry sectors. The good news is that more and more organisations around world are beginning to understand the importance and effectiveness of the systematic approach towards the total organisational excellence that the world class excellence programme can offer. Increasingly, companies are setting their goals on world class excellence as their ultimate performance target and driving their businesses relentlessly to achieve it.

This book is aiming to introduce the basic concept and promote the awareness of world class excellence and to provide guidance on the approaches towards its attainment. It presents a conceptual framework – World Class Diamond model© and describes the ways of how to apply it in real world business environment.

In preparing this book I have drawn on the ideas and thoughts of others mainly from the existing literatures, but organised them into a logical and cohesive flow for ease of reading. Notwithstanding that there are still many controversial points in the subject area; this book deliberately avoids any research oriented in-depth debate, but to focus on the concepts and practices that have been broadly agreeable. However, the key conceptual framework presented in the book was, in fact, one of the results of a recently completed research project led by WMG, University of Warwick. The author is a leading member in the World Class Assessment and Accreditation Team in WMG, and would welcome any business to participate the tailor made performance improvement programmes.

1. Introduction
   1. World Class Excellence
   2. Why It Is Worth Pursuing
2. World Class Excellence Defined
   1. Business Excellence Frameworks
   2. Operational Excellence
   3. Strategic Fit
   4. Capability to Adapt
   5. Unique Voice
3. Measuring the WC Excellence
   1. Establishing a Performance Management System
   2. Using Survey Questionnaire
   3. Benchmarking Against the Best
   4. Conducting Group Interviews
   5. Building Case Studies
4. Achieving the WC Excellence
   1. Developing a strategy for WC Excellence
   2. Involving and Motivating People
   3. Re-engineering the Processes
   4. Cultivating a Culture of Customer Centricity
   5. Developing Organisational Creativity
5. The Journey Never Ends
   1. Sustaining the WC Excellence
   2. WC Excellence in the 21st Century
6. References