Professor Mohamed Zairi

Striving for World Class Status Professor Mohamed Zairi

The notion of world class is perhaps an elusive concept that organisations be it in either the public or private sector tend to pursue in order to instil excellence as a practice in all their operational aspects but also to improve the quality of their offerings to their customers and consumers and to raise their performance impact in a variety of ways and on a sustainable basis. Successful organisations therefore are those that are considered to be world class in so many different ways. Perhaps it will be worthwhile to identify some of the key elements that characterise world class organisations: 1. An organisation that has an ambitious vision and is able to pursue it with confidence, competence and discipline. 2. An organisation that enjoys the presence of exemplar leadership in the form of individuals who have the foresighted approach to engage, inject passion, stimulate and carry the energies of all employees. 3. An organisation whose leadership understands the importance of constancy of purpose and continuity and sustainability of performance. 4. An organisation that clearly understands the needs and requirements of its customers and has created a business model driven by value creation in a seamless manner and the generation of constant, quality and positive impact on the customers. 5. An organisation that sets its store through clearly defined co-competencies that are used for creating impact and for delivering strategic objectives. 6. An organisation that embraces the concept of excellence and adapts it in an integrated fashion and allows it to permeate throughout all of its operations. 7. An organisation that has a capacity to absorb new thinking, best practices and understands how to manage change proactively. 8. An organisation that induces constant growth through innovative thinking. 9. An organisation that has a modern infra-structure and uses knowledge based practices as a means to create a solid foundation. 10. An organisation that operates through teamwork and allows the growth and development of human capital. 11. An organisation that values partnerships of all sorts and uses the opportunity for leveraging in order to increase value added to its customer base.