Three Keys to Success Are Shared by All Future-Focused Organizations

CHICAGO, Nov. 8, 2005 -- According to NueVista Strategy, a management consultancy specializing in strategic information and organizational issues, future-focused organizations share three things -- a cultural emphasis on customers and innovation, superior information gathering, and fact-based management processes.

"Future-focused organizations concentrate attention externally and are driven by information about customers, markets, and the competition," explained Greg Gleason, managing partner, NueVista Strategy. "These organizations make decisions more closely aligned with customer needs than those companies that rely primarily on information about what has happened in the past. They maximize shareholder value and excel when others in their industry run out of steam."

NueVista Strategy's observations about future-focused organizations come from the firm's research and experience with clients in the U.S. and globally.

"The first characteristic that successful future-focused companies share is a cultural emphasis on customers and innovation," Gleason said. "This emphasis is inherently future-focused because the organization is closely connected to changing economic conditions, consumer needs and tastes, technological changes, and other aspects of market evolution."

The second quality shared by future-focused organizations is an emphasis on continual information gathering. Having timely market and competitor intelligence and the ability to link it with internally generated information about performance and investment, tends to drive value-maximizing decisions. In order to gather and effectively use future-focused information, NueVista Strategy advises senior executives to concentrate on:

  -- Developing capabilities and tools for collecting and managing external
     information about markets, customers, and competitors
  -- Building processes and systems that provide timely, reliable, accurate,
     and segmented information about actual performance and investment
  -- Having and using the forecasting and analytical skills to
     systematically link internal and external views in terms of value

Fact-based management processes are the third key to success. This means actually using the market intelligence and the strategic information to drive agendas, discussions, and priorities. Experience and expertise are important but facts often require tough questions to be asked. Gleason explained that in situations where there is a conflict between data and opinion, future-focused companies push to understand why the conflict exists and what it means.

"Creating these three keys to success and building a plan for their development requires management vision and a commitment to process discipline, people, and tools to support them," Gleason said. "With these in place, leadership will be far more able to identify where adjustments should be made to ensure value is maximized."

Those interested in learning more about the keys of the successful future- focused organizations may contact NueVista Strategy at 312.621.4322, http://www.nuevistastrategy.com/ .

About NueVista Strategy

NueVista Strategy, http://www.nuevistastrategy.com/ , is a management consultancy dedicated to helping client companies improve performance and value through strong business processes, strategic effectiveness, and superior information.

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