While the governments and businesses in most of the larger economies are focussed on remedying the twin perils of debt and slow growth, it’s maybe time to reflect on the far greater challenges facing those in remote regions and war-torn areas.

The message delivered by Colin Coulson-Thomas to the first Balkan HR Summit was that businesses in this seemingly forgotten region could match, catch up, or even overtake the performance of world-class superstars.

The presentation, “Transforming the Performance of Key Workgroups” was delivered by Colin Coulson-Thomas at the first Balkan HR Summit, following welcoming remarks by the Mayor of Gjakova.

 The Summit took place in the conference suite at the Pashtriku Hotel overlooking the river between the old and new quarters of Gjakova in Kosovo. He also moderated the final plenary session which identified recommendations for action relating to the development of HR in the Balkan region.

New approach to boosting performance could regenerate struggling companies, forgotten regions and war ravaged areas

Adopting the winning ways of high performers could transform the prospects of failing companies, remote regions and war torn areas according to Colin Coulson-Thomas speaking at the first Balkan HR Summit in Kosovo. “Building critical success factors for key corporate activities into work processes or a new generation of support tools can boost the performance of important workgroups. People just about anywhere can be helped to match the performance of superstars in world class organisations”.

Coulson-Thomas believes “With the right approach stragglers can not just catch up. They can jump over the heads of those ahead of them.” His research programme has identified critical success factors for a range of activities that contribute directly to corporate success such as winning new business, building customer relationships, pricing, purchasing and creating and exploiting know-how.

The author of “Winning Companies; Winning People” believes “there is enormous scope for improvement. Even the best of the people and teams examined are only very effective at less than half of the critical success factors for a vital area such as competitive bidding. The profitability of every one of over 2,000 companies and over 500 professional firms so far examined could be quickly increased by adopting additional critical success factors.”

Coulson-Thomas showed delegates how critical success factors can also be incorporated into support tools that make it very easy for average people to excel at difficult jobs. “Performance and understanding can be increased, responses speeded up, costs cut, stress levels reduced, risks avoided and compliance enforced. Pioneer adopters have quickly obtained large multiple returns on investment.”

The new tools free people and organisations from dependency on particular locations. As a result Coulson-Thomas finds “Opportunities are mobile as never before. We have more choices than any generation in history in terms of when, where and with whom to work, earn and learn. People in a variety of regions can now be equipped to understand complex areas and do difficult and complex jobs. Opportunities can be re-located to areas where costs are lower and the quality of life is higher.”

Summit delegates were told “Establishing location independent activities in overlooked and remote areas can benefit the planet by reducing congestion and pollution in overcrowded and expensive locations. In many parts of the Balkans property prices are relatively low, development sites are available, water is plentiful and healthy living is possible. There is little point squandering scarce resources on impersonal and soulless developments in arid, expensive and artificial environments when people can live in balanced communities in beautiful locations.”

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Notes:

Over 4,000 organisations have participated in Coulson-Thomas’ Winning Companies: Winning People research programme to identify critical success factors for important activities and what top quartile high performers do differently. The findings are consistent across sectors, corporate nationalities and different sizes of organisation. The results are set out in a series of critical success factor reports and the winning ways of high performers are summarised in Coulson-Thomas’ book ‘Winning Companies: Winning People; Making it easy for average performers to adopt winning behaviours’. All are available from http:// www.policypublications.com.

The core research data bases have been constructed so that in addition to the guidance available in the book ‘Winning Companies: Winning People’ and individual critical success factor reports bespoke benchmarking reports can be generated that offer comparison with average and high performers and highlight areas to concentrate upon to match the achievements of superstars. Theses are also available from Policy Publications.

Boardroom consultant Colin Coulson-Thomas of Adaptation is also Chairman of Bryok Systems and Cotoco and a member of the human resources and OB team at the business school of the University of Greenwich. He has served on public, voluntary and professional committees and boards, including as Chairman and/or President and helped over 100 boards to improve director, board and corporate performance. He is the author of over 40 books and reports, including ‘Developing Directors’ and ‘Developing a Corporate Learning Strategy’, and spoken at over 200 conferences in 40 countries. He can be contacted via http://www.coulson-thomas.com.