Almost 60 percent of telecom executives surveyed reported that performance improvement efforts over the past three years were unsuccessful. However, the respondents judged 90 percent of the efforts to be a success. “The apparent contradiction between disappointing strategic business results and the high perceived success rate for individual initiatives suggests that operational improvement initiatives may often by inappropriately measured or poorly understood,” says Mick Holly, executive vice president of Celerant Consulting’s telecom division. “Ultimately, that means they have also been poorly executed in terms of the strategy they’re intended to serve.”

In the study, 43 percent of executives reported disappointment in meeting business and financial goals. When asked to identify the most important strategic objectives that performance improvement projects were intended to improve, 61 percent reported they wanted to improve customer satisfaction, 31 percent reported they wanted to increase market share and 49 percent reported they wanted to increase shareholder value.

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