- David Leslie
- October 16, 2024
What does the word 'excellence' mean to you and your business?
- Do you consider yourself to be excellent?
- Do you strive for excellence?
- Is excellence a standard you demand from your people and their operations?
In my experience, It is fair to say that most organisations are striving for excellence, but upon digging a little deeper, it’s more often than not the case that excellence is simply a word that’s peddled.

Not only do most organisations not have a nailed-down definition of excellence looks like for their various lines of business / individuals, they also wouldn’t be able to tell you whether they’re achieving it, as the metrics to support that aren’t actually being measured in that way.
DNA of Excellence for Internal and External Benchmarking
This is why / how we came to develop the DNA of Excellence; a methodology and resulting set of dashboards developed to firstly understand what your various gold standards are / what does excellent look like across your business.
Then benchmark against them in real-time, and ultimately put proactive plans in place to ensure that every line of business is preforming above that magic line – all with a view to accelerating your business towards its strategic goals.
This process also forms the basis of external benchmarking that you might be looking to implement – how are we performing against industry standards? Sector standards? Or against regulatory requirements?
Let’s think of some real-world examples to bring this concept to life, I’m going to over-simplify to stop this turning into an unreadable essay, but I think it will cover the points.
DNA of Excellence in Practice
For simplicity’s sake, let’s say the CEO of a £200m turnover business overseas Operations, HR, Finance, IT, FM, Marketing and Sales.
We work with that CEO to uncover, say, 3 top level metrics that give an indication as to how each of those functions are performing. We then kick off a process of looking at historical data, industry standards and some insider knowledge from the leaders that know those areas the best to understand exactly what ‘excellent’ looks like for that particular measure.
DNA of Excellence - HR Example
Let’s use HR as an example to dive in on. Those metrics could be:
- Employee Turnover
- Exit Interview Score
- Recruitment Costs
Now, using a mixture of historical data, CHRO knowledge and cross-referencing against industry standards, we define what ‘excellent’ looks like for each of these numbers and set that benchmark.
Traffic Light Gauge System
We then build out an easy-to-understand traffic light gauge system that allows the exec to see, at a glance, exactly how that metric is performing today against the benchmark.
This is then repeated across the different lines of business until we have a dashboard full of red, amber, and green gauges that quickly and efficiently point out areas for concern and areas to celebrate.
In the green and all good? Great, go about your day in confidence!
But this is where it gets fun…
Drifted into the amber? OK, let’s have a look at that. With one click of the chart, we’re able to access the levels of detail that make up that metric.
Deep Dive Into the 'Details' Dashboard
Let’s stay on the HR example and specifically think about Recruitment Costs.
You arrive one morning, and Recruitment Costs have drifted into the red, so you click on the gauge to find out a little more.
You’re greeted with a ‘details’ dashboard that has a group of related charts, you can now see:
- Time to fill vacancies
- Internal vs external recruitment consultant costs
- Your best and worst performing recruiting advertisement channels
- Number of vacancies filled / to fill
- Internal moves vs leavers
From a combination of these you’re able to see that your leavers number is way higher this month than it has been for the last 12.
Which leads you to check the exit interview scores, where you find out that you have a lot of people leaving operational roles due to a lack of perceived employee progression.
Which in-turn prompts you to reach out to both your HR Leaders and Operational Leaders to develop and internally market a career paths program and ‘buddy’ up operational employees with a mentor dedicated to their growth.
Analytics in Action
Automating HR for a Major FM Service Provider
HR admin task automation is saving our client valuable resources that can now be focused on core responsibilities and strategic initiatives that drive the business forward.
Conclusion - Is Your Business Excellent?
The DNA of excellence isn’t just about monitoring, it is about turning data into actions that impact the business.
Sure it’s nice to know whether you’re doing well against last year / month’s performance, but what’s even better is getting out in front of potential challenges before they become obstacles to achieving your strategic objectives.
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