Despite claims to the contrary, quality is not what differentiates one manufacturer from his competitors. Sure, there are those better at consistent quality than others, but the top 20% of suppliers of a particular good or service all have predictable and reliable quality. While you may provide great quality, that is not the enterprise capability that matters.

Enterprise capabilities are those aspects of a business that are crucial to ongoing success. They are not defined by your product or service. They are the thinking, integrating, and value-adding your organization has mastered that differentiate you.

So what are those characteristics of your business?

There are three common ingredients that together work to identify, develop, and maintain those capabilities. They are the business operating system, the design competency, and the development of people.

The first has little to do with software and everything to do with processes, culture, and strategies that define "how we think and act." The second is not limited to product or service. Every aspect of an enduring business is well designed, from design for profitability to process design, to a commitment for intentional design to replace accidental evolution. "Because we always have" reflects an organization that is not well designed. The third ingredient, development of people, is woven through daily activities and conversations, with no interruptions for "busy season" or "slow season."

If your products or customers disappeared tomorrow, what important value could your business provide the next day? If you have no answer, you are focused on the mechanics of your business and not on the true value it could provide.

The enterprise capabilities that tomorrow will require on not the same as those of today. But they will be identified, developed and maintained through those same 3 ingredients: the business operating system, design competency permeating the entire organization, and development of people. And those systems are what are designed to build in the cost, quality and speed attributes that you target. Or not.