What are the central principles of business excellence?

What are the key principles of excellent organizations?

Excellent companies are oriented towards the relevant interest groups: they continuously meet or exceed the expectations of their interest groups in a balanced manner.
Excellent companies pursue a promising direction: they have an inspiring purpose, a motivating future goal and a strategy that is geared towards sustainable benefits.
Excellent companies demonstrate implementation strength through involvement: they involve their stakeholders intensively in value creation and constantly improve their performance based on feedback.
Excellent companies use a holistic, balanced approach: They think holistically and ensure that the goal, plan, implementation, measurements and results all fit together.
Excellent companies assume social responsibility: they make contributions to the Sustainable World and society that go beyond their purpose.
Excellent companies strive for improvement AND change: they are able to both continuously improve and make the necessary changes.
Excellent companies achieve sustainable results in the long term: They think long-term and pursue balanced results that go beyond short-term financial ratios.

Central principles of excellent organizations

Orientation towards interest groups

"Excellent organizations consistently achieve outstanding performance that meets or exceeds the expectations of all their stakeholders." This is the definition of "business excellence" and probably one of the best explanations of corporate success.

Promising orientation

Excellent organizations provide orientation to their stakeholders. Among other things, they have an inspiring purpose, a motivating future goal (target image, vision), a strategy geared towards sustainable benefits and a supportive culture.

Implementation power through integration

Excellent organizations involve their stakeholders intensively in value creation. They constantly measure their performance and improve it on the basis of feedback. In this way, they ensure that needs are not ignored.

Holistic, balanced approach

Excellent organizations think "holistically". Goal, plan, implementation, measurements and results fit together like a puzzle. The puzzle appeals to all interest groups. Since interrelationships are known and many things are routine, "fire drills" remain the exception.

Social responsibility

Excellent organizations make contributions to the Sustainable World and society that go beyond their purpose. For example, they make an effective contribution to the "Agenda 2030" and the "UN SDG" goals and refrain from "greenwashing".

Improvement AND change

Excellent organizations are able to continuously improve (small steps) as well as make necessary changes (big steps). They notice early on when environmental conditions change and act accordingly.

Long-term sustainable results

Excellent organizations think long-term. They pursue balanced results with substance that go beyond short-term and backward-looking financial ratios. In particular, they measure the current perceptions of interest groups and have (early) indicators for predicting future developments.