Are you making the most of your X-Factor?

Friday, 10th September 2004

PDS’ Paul Sheedy uncovers the mystery of the X-Factor for automotive suppliers.

What is the ‘X-factor’? Well, if you’re asking Simon Cowell on his latest talent spotting reality TV show, he says he will know it when he sees it!

Now try any Economist and they will talk about the bit that is left over when you compare the capital invested, plus the different skills level, plus the added value to explain the difference in productivity between two economies!

Still wondering?

Consider this. Take two companies in the same industry, in the same location and making more or less the same products. One is highly profitable and the other is going bust. The difference between the two is straightforward, the difference is how well they are run and how well they are run is that elusive X-factor!

Now if you’re thinking that it couldn’t possibly be that simple, and that it must be something more elaborate, then consider these two pieces of evidence.

Firstly, research from a top business university (Insead, Paris) into why companies in the same industry had such varying results concluded that ‘how well the company was run was more influential than what industry it was in!’

Secondly, a little closer to home, PDS has worked with Accelerate-supported companies to help turn underperformance into sustainable industry- leading results.

These clients haven’t done it by changing the people or the industry they supply, they have done it by focussing on how well they run their business.

We don’t call it the X-factor, in fact we don’t call it anything. We just like to get to the goal.

The goal is to get everybody behind what needs to be done for their company to be successful.

So how do you go about it?

At PDS, we like to quote a guy called Sam Walton, who took his four-outlet supermarket chain in Texas and created Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest company.

He used one basic maxim... “I’m doing business right here, right now!” He didn’t worry about how he could ever match the ‘big guys’, he just got on with being successful with what he had. Just for the record, he didn’t discover some new patented method of selling groceries either!

Let me translate Sam’s story to the automotive world and your company. Start with what you have, find out what you need to do to be successful at it and do it!

From this you will grow strong. Strength brings opportunities and from opportunities come winning strategies. I’m not suggesting you are the next Sam Walton, you might be but you don’t have to be.

What I am suggesting is that you have an opportunity right here, right now to make your company a stronger and more competitive business.

You can call it the x-factor if you like; you can even audition for Mr Cowell for that matter.

Whatever you decide to do, don’t pass up the opportunity to make the most of what you have and see where it leads you.