No matter how successful a company is today, its future depends on staying a step ahead of the competition.
Perhaps the most unsettling reality facing companies today is that old business practices, even when they're best practices, may no longer be sufficient to meet the business challenges presented by the new economy. Companies need to develop a best-practices capability -- an infrastructure that enables them to meet challenges head-on and adapt to new business environments.
Companies with a best-practices capability are able to cope with the next new thing, even though they may not yet know what it is. To borrow an analogy from hockey great Wayne Gretsky, these companies skate to where the puck is heading, not where it is now. While this capability may manifest itself differently from one company to another, companies with staying power share a few distinct characteristics: