Are you Capable Enough to Succeed in Frontier Markets? Find Out!

Lately I’ve been sharing the Model for Building Successful Frontier Market Organizations and last week we examined the first element, Clarity. The need to be clear about where you are going and to have:

Today I’ll focus on the second C: Capability. In other words, does your organisation have the capacity to achieve your vision?

The capacity to deliver hinges on your ability to recruit, develop and retain A-players. Take Netflix’s success story for example. A large part of it can be traced back to the culture they have developed and their talent philosophy. They only hire people that are responsible and possess the following characteristics:

Netflix believes that responsible people thrive on freedom making them more creative. They are also able to respond and adapt faster to changing situations.

Line managers collectively have the largest impact on the performance of the organisation. The better your line managers are selected, trained and guided the greater the performance of their subordinates. The difficulty of course is that every company has many line managers each with their individual styles, preferences and habits. Your success will depend on your ability to get line managers to consistently display the following behaviors:

• Demonstrate a credible commitment to an individuals development
• Leverages employee “fit” and get the best out of each individual
• Provide fair and accurate informal feedback and emphasize employee strengths in performance reviews

Drive Performance

• Put people in the right job at the right time
• Clarify performance expectations and hold people accountable
• Connect employees with the organisation and its success
• Provide solutions for day-to-day challenges

Build Teams

• Commit to diversity and team building where trust, honesty and integrity are the main characteristics
• Recognize people daily
• Help team members to build a high quality network of colleagues

One important component required to deliver on your organisation’s aspirations is the availability of resources. This includes financial resources, machinery, plants, tools, IT systems and offices as well as the infinite availability of information and the ability of a company to share it across the organisation.

Organisational knowledge in my experience is the least valued asset of any company, even though it should be the highest. An organization should be able to capture knowledge and share it with whoever needs it. Of course with web 2.0 technology such as MindTouch, Wikispaces, and MediaWiki, there are no reasons why your organisation should not be able to leverage its most valuable asset and safeguard it for future generations.

Sports provides ample opportunities to highlight the importance of collaboration and the power of teams. Only a week ago Atletico Madrid, a football team that costs GBP 30 mln beat Chelsea, a team that costs 6 times that much on their home ground by 3-1.  Of course sports analogies do not always translate well into an organisation and in my experience silo’s still rule the workplace (though this is such a hot topic that I will spend a complete blog on this in the future). Physical work distance is a scientifically proven barrier to collaboration and common agendas, personal relations, ability to deal with conflict, to hold each other accountable and to ‘take one’ for the team are all components in strengthening teams and collaboration.

With an inspiring vision, clear strategy and a capable organisation in place your company will most likely churn out reasonable results. However the magic to transform your company into a high-performer is still missing. That final ingredient is Commitment, the desire to achieve the impossible. I’ll focus on that element next week in the final episode of the Secret Model to Building a Successful Frontier Market Organisation.

Keep your comments coming!