Operational Excellence - the secret to high performing companies

by Steven Ma, Chief Operating Officer, Comet CX
Line editing and transcription assistance by ChatGPT

Let’s talk about operational excellence.

At its core, operational excellence is not about tools, frameworks, or maturity models. It is about rhythm. The most fundamental cycle consists of four elements: a metric, a goal, a task list, and a cadence. When these work together, they create an operating rhythm that makes progress sustainable rather than episodic.

At Comet CX, we are deliberately building an operational system around a small number of key metrics that align directly to our organisational goals. These metrics are not decorative. They exist to anchor attention and decision-making. They feed into a balanced scorecard that we inspect at different cadences depending on context: sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly, sometimes quarterly.

The important part is not the scorecard itself, but the shared inspection. The right teams meet at the right times, looking at the same metrics. When we discuss initiatives, priorities, or problems, they are tied back to those metrics. This prevents meetings from drifting into opinion or noise. We know what matters because the metrics are explicit.

When we decide to act, those actions are recorded and tracked through a task list we refer to as a backlog. The name is not important. What matters is that actions are visible, owned, and followed through. Every action exists to move a metric in a deliberate direction.

Cadence is what makes this sustainable. We meet regularly, weekly, fortnightly, monthly, or quarterly as required, to inspect, adjust, and continue. Because the rhythm is consistent, the system can run for long periods without relying on heroics or bursts of effort.

Operational excellence, in practice, is simply the discipline of keeping these four elements connected over time.