O<\/span>perational excellence enables an enterprise and its leadership to continuously improve all areas of performance, including decision- making, ongoing investment, profitability, customer and partner services and human resources capabilities.<\/p>\n Operationally excellent enterprises possess the processes and structures\u2013or the \u201cintangible assets\u201d\u2013that give them the visibility, control, tools, and management practices necessary to drive greater operational effectiveness and efficiency.<\/p>\n Operational excellence had its genesis in manufacturing dating back to the pre-Industrial Revolution. In his 1776 magnum opus, The Wealth of Nations<\/em>, economist and philosopher Adam Smith was among the first great thinkers to define this now widely used concept. Smith famously described a small pin factory where 10 workers, each specializing in a different aspect of the job, could produce over 48,000 pins a day. Left to make a pin on his own, each of these workers might not have manufactured a single one in a day, and certainly not more than 20. The division of labor immensely increased the productivity of each worker. It\u2019s still true today that assigning different roles and responsibilities across an enterprise enables scale, lowers costs and leads to greater operational efficiencies.<\/p>\n Delivering continuous improvement in the marketplace among competitors and customers requires enterprises to identify, understand and create the capabilities, behaviors and focuses necessary for repeatable, continuous and measurable operational improvement.<\/p>\n Find out more from this presentation that I gave at a Nextea<\/a> Event.<\/p>\n