Outlook Journal, June 2005
Every successful program for creating a high-performance business is based on a broad strategic vision. But the path to high performance is often taken in incremental steps—day-to-day decisions about basic issues that are critical to every organization. With that two-part formulation in mind—the pursuit of high performance informed by an overall strategy but executed tactically on the ground—we've made some changes in our editorial mix that we hope will make Outlook more timely and useful for our readers.
This issue is the fifth to explore high-performance business in a larger strategic context at both the industry and enterprise levels. It is anchored by three articles. Our cover story looks at distinctive capabilities, one of the three basic building blocks of high performance, and at how companies can combine a selection of processes in ways that lead to business success. The often unconventional approaches taken by top-performing organizations to continuously renew themselves is the subject of a companion article. The third article, the seventh in our series of industry reports, focuses on the particular attributes required to achieve high performance in the retail hypermarket sector.
Much of the rest of the issue is a departure. To our usual longer-format articles offering Accenture's latest thinking on broad topics, we are adding shorter, more focused features that take a hands-on, solutions-oriented approach to specific but nonetheless crucial issues—those that executives grapple with every day. In a classic news-you-can-use format, these articles explore, among other topics, new tools for bringing financial reporting more in line with true shareholder value; how organizations can use broadband and Internet Protocol technologies to achieve transformational change; supply chain strategies based on low-cost-country sourcing; and smarter ways to manage information that will improve decision making and create value. This new format, which includes the increased use of charts and graphs, is complemented by refinements in our design that further enhance our ability to present information in a fresh, visually appealing manner.
These changes are intended to address issues that executives encounter where the rubber meets the road to high performance.
David Cudaback
Editor-in-Chief
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