Boardroom Despatches: Making your spike spikier

What is it that your organisation can do better than anyone else? Is it being fully harnessed? René Carayol asks you to ask whether your board is missing a trick.

Great, enduring organisations fascinate me. What is their secret sauce? What works for them - and maybe not others in exactly the same field?

The same question can of course be asked of individuals. When I started work at Pepsi years ago, an American executive said I should "make my spike spikier". What did he mean? He wanted me to know what I am best at and become even better at it.

I will get on to why this is important - and finish with a challenge to any reader brave enough for some self-examination and honesty - but first let me spell out what I mean by using two great examples.

We all know Nokia - the largest company from Finland by some way and the global leader in mobile phone sales (also by some way). Forget, for a second, that they are a technology company. Consider the following reason for their success.

A potted history many of you will be aware of sees Nokia move from a vertically integrated paper company - owning forests, mills and paper sales - to being a rubber manufacturer. Only times moved on again and the same organisation turned to technology. Mobile products weren't the only type of category over the ensuing years but they've proved the most successful.

Generations of executives must be given credit for seeing the upcoming areas of demand, for claiming first mover advantage in some instances.

But this, I believe, isn't why Nokia became a great company. What made them great is all about being modular. When you are dealing with some of the fastest moving technology in the world it helps when pretty much everything is reusable.

That goes for phones - obvious examples might include inner circuitry, keypads or user interfaces - but also less glamorous things such as facilities around the world. Payroll systems, databases, logistics - all are standardised globally.

Consider many a big company, especially those that have grown by acquisition. They face a mishmash of systems. It's a nightmare.

Why is Nokia this way? When it made the leap from rubber to technology executives were sent to the Helsinki University of Technology. They all learnt programming in the same way. Most importantly - like in most good programming - they were taught how to reuse sound code. At best, 10 per cent of a new program was original. This made for work that was quick and less risky.

In short, modularity became part of Nokia's DNA.

Now ask a CIO about that kind of approach. He or she will smile. CIOs like things that way because when everything is consistent their jobs are much easier. Of course other executives don't usually see it like that. They want different things and don't understand the attendant risks.

As an aside, how modular is your company? I can't think of any like that in the UK - and if you work for one, I'd like to know. I'm afraid it seems we always like to start from the beginning.

But modularity is just one approach, albeit one that has worked well for Nokia. The overall question here is what's your unique process? What gives you competitive advantage?

Brave organisations invite in others, showing them everything. They know they have such an advantage that it cannot be copied. Dell famously will do that. Let me talk to you about another, a company that has shared its approach with me.

Royal Bank of Scotland has in recent times grown to become one of the largest financial institutions in the world. Every morning of every working day the board holds an 08:00 meeting. CEO Fred Goodwin meets with his direct reports. These meetings are quick and those that are unable to be there in person beam in from wherever they are in the world.

This daily get-together gives the team social unity - they all know each other exceedingly well. They are all comfortable enough to argue and fight and still get along. Sometimes they carry on after meetings, whether that's in the office or at a pub.

But the cohesion aside, this approach gives them agility. When an opportunity rears its head, they can strike.

So, after seeing RBS' success, why don't other banks do the same thing? The approach, in fact, goes back to its founding in 1727. It used to happen just the same then, too. (Alright, so it was because many of the management back then were gentry and wanted to go out hunting and fishing every afternoon. But that's a digression.)

Like modularity for Nokia, the daily morning meeting for RBS is hard-wired in, part of its DNA.

And my bet is that if you asked the boards if their major rivals do the same thing you'd find them rolling about the floor in hysterics. Just knowing how a successful competitor operates doesn't mean you can do the same thing.

Nokia, Dell, RBS and a handful of others have found what works for them. I would argue that all of us, at a corporate and individual level, must do the same thing. We can then accentuate what we do well - make our spikes spikier, to keep on stealing that phrase.

I'd like to put this challenge to silicon.com readers. First, do you agree? If you don't by all means tell me but if you do, I'd like to know what your secret is - and how you make your spike spikier. You can email me at editorial@silicon.com. Or share it with others that read this column by posting a Reader Comment. Go on, I dare you.