Optimisation. Or new concept? What makes the difference? Why?

Optimisation. Or new concept? What makes the difference? Why?

What is it about? Cost reduction, efficiency enhancement and optimisation programmes are part of the operational basics. Such programmes are initiated and implemented time and again. In most cases they are effective and lead to an improvement in operational performance. They are necessary and yet they are often not enough to remain competitive. What is to be done?

"Another cost-cutting programme! Tedious. It's driving employees crazy, they're fed up. Is that even necessary?" That's how it sounds from some companies, or similar. In most cases, operational improvement programmes are necessary. But sometimes you have to ask yourself if there are not better ways to improve operational performance? 

"If you discover you are riding a dead horse, get off."

At the latest, when you come to the conclusion that you are not getting anywhere, then it is time to think differently. Think differently? It's not about how, it's about what and why. What are we doing? Why are we doing this? 

As soon as you have focused on the what and why, you are in a position to think of new concepts. The focus is then not on optimisation but on the new. 

There are countless examples that show that entrepreneurial action is not only guided by optimisation but by new concepts, approaches and strategies. Often it is young companies, the start-ups, that courageously go new ways and question established business models and are successful as a result. They have it easier because they don't have to throw the old overboard, they can start from scratch. The seemingly revolutionary is not often mind-blowing on closer inspection. The new is often just simpler, faster, cheaper and thus more customer-friendly. I am thinking of the countless internet applications (credit for house purchase, company loan, share purchase, taking out insurance; ordering food, ticketing, tickets, ski subscriptions, clothes, furniture, etc.) or new business models such as car sharing, social networks, training via video, on-demand services, etc., etc. In most cases, it is not that a need is going extinct. Travel agencies, for example, are not disappearing because people no longer travel; they are disappearing because travel-related services can be provided more easily, more cheaply, more quickly by travellers themselves. The manufacturers of typewriters - to add another example - have not gone under because people no longer write. The need remains. Satisfying this need poses new challenges to the providers again and again.

Questioning oneself is becoming more and more important. The more established you are as a company, the more important self-doubt is. Because you can always do the wrong thing better.