Consistency, the unsung superpower of great businesses

I once had a cricket coach who gathered the team before the first match of the season.

“Forget about scoring 100 and concentrate on 20” he said, 

“It doesn’t sound much does it?” he went on, “But if everyone scores 20 runs today, we’ll almost definitely win the match today.  If you score 20 every match we play this season, you’ll almost certainly be the top scorer in the team at the end of the summer.”

His observation points to something overlooked in business.  While innovation, strategic vision, and market disruption often capture headlines, there's an unsung superpower that quietly underpins the achievements of great businesses: consistency. This principle, often overlooked in the pursuit of grand gestures, is in fact a vital ingredient that permeates every aspect of an organization, from how products are delivered to how customer relationships are nurtured. Understanding and mastering consistency is not merely about maintaining standards; it's about building trust, fostering reliability, and ultimately, securing a sustainable advantage in the marketplace.

Products and Services

Buyers need to trust what they are getting.  Imagine buying a brand of teabags on a regular basis and finding that sometimes it tasted a bit different, or used different material for the bags on occasion or even if the packaging changed frequently.  Very few people would continue to buy that brand.

One of the most important first steps for manufacturers is to devise a repeatable consistent way to produce their product.

The same applies for service industries and retail.  In service industries the aim must be that the client experience is consistent, that the service they get repeats whoever the staff member is.  And in retail, we’ve all experienced the frustration of finding the product we went to buy is not available.

Almost any great brand you can think of has developed a huge amount of trust from its customers.  Apple users don’t question whether the product will be excellent.  They trust it will.  When we buy Kellogg’s we don’t wonder if the cornflakes will be fresh and crunchy, we know they will.  We aren’t wondering what the coffee or ambiance will be like in Starbucks, we know.

It’s why train companies obsess about running on time, why restaurants train staff in all aspects of the dining experience, why accountants live by checklists.

Sales and Marketing

Talk to marketeers and you can almost guarantee that most of the conversation will be about consistency.  The brand must look and feel consistent, the message should be consistent, we must choose some marketing tactics and stick with them consistently to build brand awareness.

Once we have potential customers we need to follow a consistent sales process. Looping back to my cricket coach, the salesperson who can deliver consistent sales is worth way more than the one who occasionally smashes it out of the park.

Operations

The idea of inconsistency in operations is almost laughable.  Whoever said:  “We have a brilliant payroll department despite them messing up our pay every once in a while.”

Or “Our finance team is outstanding but they sometimes do random things.”

Executive

Even here in a business function that we tend to associate with visionaries, leaders, problem solvers and communicators, I would argue that consistency is a vital ingredient.  The executive must build the business, returning time and again to achieve the consistency customers, staff and investors demand.

This involves being consistent with the vision, the message, treating people fairly which is a term closely aligned with consistency, maintaining cycles of data gathering, reporting, reflection and problem solving.

Conclusion

So make consistency your aim.  Average occasionally is terrible, average every time is very good, good every time is outstanding and outstanding every time is unrealistic.