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This week’s focus: I was talking to the CEO of a highly successful company this week who was lamenting the fact that although the business was growing and profitable, he wasn’t entirely sure why. “What we need,” he told me “is to fully understand our recipe for success.

He’s right to be concerned. If you don’t understand your ‘recipe for success’ you are unlikely to be able to sustain or replicate it. This is particularly true in dynamic, fast-changing markets where constant tweaks and amendments to the recipe will be required.

Take Morrisons, for example. The UK grocer announced major losses this week and saw its share price fall by 10%. The underlying reason for the poor results is clear: management did not understand Morrisons’ ‘recipe for success’ – in particular, the importance of value to its customers – and as discounters have changed shoppers’ perceptions of value, Morrisons failed to make the necessary adjustments to its offer.

What is your company’s ‘recipe for success’ and what are you doing to ensure that you develop and sustain it to drive future growth?

Off the record: What Is Success? by Bonnie Raitt

Now what, what, what is success?

Is it to do your own thing

Or to join the rest?

© Stuart Cross 2014. All rights reserved.