🇬🇧 01 — WHY BOL: Beyond Operational Lean?
When excellence becomes the destination instead of the means
🔎 Operational Excellence has transformed the industrial world. But what happens when excellence becomes the objective — rather than the means to create future value?
Many successful industrial companies have built their advantage around a powerful combination:
⚙️ Deep product expertise.
⚙️ Strong engineering capabilities.
⚙️ Manufacturing excellence.
⚙️ Long-standing customer relationships.
⚙️ Continuous improvement.
These capabilities are strengths.
But over time, strengths can become strategic blind spots.
⚠️ What happens when the market starts moving somewhere else?
The market does not stand still.
Technologies change.
Customer expectations change.
Business models change.
Value chains change.
New competitors emerge from unexpected places.
And sometimes, the most important opportunity is not inside the company.
🔄 It is emerging outside it.
This is particularly relevant for industrial companies operating as OEMs, Tier Suppliers or highly specialized manufacturers.
Their proximity to customers is a major advantage.
But it can also become a double-edged sword.
Because today’s customers cannot always tell us what the market will value tomorrow.
This leads to a distinction that I increasingly see as critical:
⚙️ Operational Excellence asks:
“How can we become better at what we do?”
But the strategic question is:
🎯 “What should we do next?”
Operational Excellence is at the heart of execution.
It is not the compass of strategy.
🎯 The compass has to come from the market.
The risk emerges when an execution capability becomes the dominant lens through which an organization interprets its future.
And this is where I believe Market Centricity becomes essential.
It is not about abandoning Product Excellence.
It is about making sure that Product Excellence remains connected to where the market is going.
🌱 Prosperity depends on an organization’s ability to keep creating what comes next.
This is the thinking behind BOL — Beyond Operational Lean.
Not another methodology for improving operations.
Not another sales program.
But a different way of thinking about how an organization:
→ reads its environment
→ makes strategic choices
→ innovates
→ connects product capabilities with market opportunities
→ turns those opportunities into sustainable value.
⚠️ Because the greatest risk for a successful company may not be inefficiency.
It may be becoming exceptionally good at doing what the market will value less tomorrow.
After more than three decades working across industries, companies and five continents, this is one question I keep coming back to:
How fast is your business cycle turning — and is your organization turning with it?
🌱 If the market is the compass, what happens when the product is still the starting point?
Next: Product Centricity vs Market Centricity.