Importance of Organization Focus and Vision

Bill has come up with another interesting blog post asking fellow bloggers to comment on right organization focus and vision.  He writes about his experience at the recent European Organization for Quality Annual Congress, the speeches from Professor Noriaki Kano and Mr. Ulf Gustavsson of Ikea and his visit to the Volvo automobile manufacturing factory.

One striking thing that I noticed, from Bill’s post, is the “practical” focus on quality control, customer experience and safety which are very important for an organization from today’s business perspective.  It shall be noted that Professor Kano just re-emphasized the importance of quality control and quality tools for fixing the current problem, which should be the immediate focus.  Ikea is very customer focused and clear with respect its vision – high and consistent customer experience.   Volvo’s vision is more like achieving six sigma level safety standards, by year 2020, in all automobiles it sells. 

Out of curiosity, I searched Apple’s website to understand their organization vision and focus.  Unfortunately, I could not find any reference to what I was looking for.  Interestingly, I stumbled on this article that kind of conveyed Apple’s focus from none other than Tim Cook, who took over as Apple’s leader from the legendary Steve Jobs.   Here is a quick excerpt from the article and Tim’s words were:

“We believe that we are on the face of the earth to make great products and that’s not changing. We are constantly focusing on innovating. We believe in the simple not the complex.” 

We can clearly comprehend that Apple’s focus is to make great products with continuous focus on innovation and their firm belief in simplicity.   Quite amazing and powerful focus, isn’t it?  Can we explain about delivering customer experience in a better way?  That is what Apple is!

Here is another interesting part to note from the same article, Tim said:

“We believe in deep collaboration and cross-pollination of our groups, which allow us to innovate in a way that others cannot. And frankly, we don’t settle for anything less than excellence in every group in the company, and we have the self-honesty to admit when we’re wrong and the courage to change.”

Apple’s focus on its internal customers – their employees is commendable.  They strongly believe in deep collaboration and cross-pollination which allows them to innovate which is a key differentiator from its peers.   And the greatness comes from the “self-honesty” fact that when things go wrong, they have the courage to admit that and adopt change.