When you spend time in a high-performing business, you know that you are somewhere special and in a place where you have long term stability. It is in the air. It is not some secret technology or technique, but it is the combination of various attributes that makes the company an exciting place.
High-performing companies have a simple, intriguing vision for how it will run in the future, one that resonates with employees, easy for everyone to understand. For example, Disney’s vision is “To make people happy’” This vision is simple, evoking a sense of pride and purpose, measurable by the smiles of children everywhere, including in theatres, theme parks, at homes and in stores.
This list highlights the top 10 companies who consistently show exemplary performance. Their performance is rocketing despite bad economic trends. This article is not based on Fortune 500 ratings. It was creating using research and noting long term trends and improvements of each company.
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1. Wal-Mart:
This retail business outfit has been successful is retaining the top spot in the world’s largest companies. It has made advancement in its effort of becoming worker and environment friendly company. Despite a drop in sales, it revenues are increasing. Marvelously it has ruled the Fortune 500 list for the second year in a row.
The total assets of Walmart as of the year 2011 were valued at $180 Billion with a net income of $15 Billion in the 2010/2011 fiscal year. Within the same time period, this corporation announced total revenues of approximately $422 Billion. The company has registered rapid growth since its inception, especially after the year 200. This rapid growth and expansion has had both beneficial and detrimental effects from different kinds of perspectives.
Why the growth?
a) Improved Corporate Governance: Exemplary corporate governance has played an important part in Walmart success. Mike Duke is the current president and Chief Executive officer of the corporation. At Walmart, he’s envision a company, where all employees are referred to as associates and not employees. This has immensely helped in helping the associates feel in the right place and proud to work at Walmart.
b) Strong Foundation: Walmart’s success starts with a strong foundation that was laid by its founder, Sam Walton. He had a strong value for other people’s opinions and he always had time to listen; this is what made him a good leader. Another outstanding characteristic of Sam Walton was that he carefully chose among these ideas and then put them into practice.
c) Discounts: Discounts have been part of Walmart’s retail experience since its founding in 1962. Most competitors of Walmart have found it a challenge to compete with its unique discounts on all sorts of products.
d) Corporate Social Responsibility: Walmart is well-known for be largely active and in giving back to the community. Through its corporate social responsibility strategy, Walmart has created numerous programs that are geared towards enhancing the well being of the community and the people living in it.
2. Exxon-Mobil:
A joint project propelled the company to second spot. Exxon-Mobil signed a $5 Billion landmark deal with Sinopec and Saudi Aramco for the expansion of a petrochemical venture in China. It has also recently signed a joint venture with Qatar and an offshore well in Russia in its drive for alternative energy. The company was ranked # 2 by Forbes in 2011.
As one of the largest company in the oil and natural gas sector, ExxonMobil is an exemplary, high-performing company that has successfully executed vertical integration to increase its market share, sales revenue and its profitability as a company.
It can be seen that with effective execution of vertical integration and moving beyond the traditional market and boundaries, Exxon-Mobil has become a success story. The start up of major eight upstream projects during 2008 attests to the fact that despite the global economic recession, Exxon-Mobil has been able to keep a stable performance. Much of the credit can be given to the strength of the long term business model that Exxon-Mobil adopted recently.
At the core of their beliefs, Exxon-Mobil asserts that with careful planning and proper use of resources, diversification can be an added advantage to any company.
3. Chevron:
Chevron is the leader in offshore drilling which has several ongoing oil exploration projects including that in Tahiti. Now the company has to deal with Nigeria and the hostilities from terrorists. In February of 2011, it acquired Atlas Energy, a natural gas operation.
4. ConocoPhilips:
The Company is the 4th best company according to Forbes in 2011. It has improved since 2009, when it ranked 8th. Stocks rose 40% in 2011 with planned assets worth over $15 billion in the subsequent 18 months.
5. Royal Dutch Shell:
Amidst the global wide energy crisis, Royal Dutch Shell has been able to make strategic moves to ensure the company’s position in the future moving on to bigger stakes in Alberta, Canada and Qatar.
Developing talent is important to Shell. The name is a pseudonym for a group of companies operating in some 130 countries and employing more than 100,000 people, Shell depends on the effective leadership and management in every one of its businesses. Developing outstanding HR talent in supporting these businesses is a key element of its HR strategy that Shell has implemented very well in the last decade.
The companies under Shell have one big aspiration and that is to ensure that its key people processes reflect the company’s best practice. However, the head of its HR functional excellence team, Rick Brown, believed that in some areas, the Shell approach would benefit from an external perspective in understanding the most important elements of a performance that differentiated the best organization from its peers.
6. Apple:
The company is a multinational corporation co-founded by the late Steve Jobs. The company has 357 retail stores in 10 countries as of July 2011. Its sales keep rocketing and total $108.2 billion in 2011. It was chosen as the most admired companies by Forbes.How high can Apple Inc. reach? This juggernaut is now closing in on $500 per share, a dramatic increase, in comparison to the company’s stunning performance over the last decade.
How big has Apple become? It’s now worth more, in terms of its market capitalization, than Google and Microsoft combined. The company’s latest rise in stock prices were coupled with the release of the new iPad3 in early 2012.
So what’s driving Apple’s elevated valuation? The answers lie in their sizzling financial performance: In the last quarter of 2011, the company reported a profit of $13.1 billion on sales of $46.3 billion. And of course, we cannot forget that Apple has nearly $100 billion in cash stowed away.
7. Toyota:
Toyota has gained significant strides to become the global leader in hybrid-electric cars with the decline of operations of US carmakers. Toyota ended the year closing in to the coat tails of US car giant General Motors just short of 3000 units of cars sold.
Toyota recently got the “gold medal” for developing bilateral and multilateral knowledge sharing routines with suppliers that resulted in superior inter-organizational or network learning. Toyota is widely recognized by both Japanese and U.S. firms as a leader in continuous learning and improvement.
There are a number of reasons to examine Toyota’s practices in greater detail in this top 10 article. First, Toyota is the largest Japanese company and continues to be voted by Japanese executives as the best managed and the also the most respected Japanese company. Second, the most rapid diffusion of lean production techniques (i.e., kanban and inventory reduction) has occurred within Toyota and its suppliers.
8. General Motors:
In 2009, GM retained its 9th spot as it braces for the further economic problems. The Company’s financial loss for 2008 is estimated at $39 Billion and is expected to be hounded with problems as it faces fierce competition from its fierce rival, Toyota. In 2011, its ranking has improved on Fortune 500 by 1 spot. It has come out from bankruptcy with $20 billion in public offerings.
9. ING Group:
Amidst the turbulent situation in the financial sector, the ING Group is the only financial outfit which made it to Top 10. Part of the reasons for the performance of the company was the successful implementation of its streamlining of its core businesses and aggressive marketing programs.
Their exemplary behavior is rooted in their mission statement, which states “ING’s mission is to set the standard in helping our customers manage their financial future. ING aims to deliver financial products and services in the way that our customers want them delivered: with exemplary service, convenience and at competitive prices.”
10. Ford Motors:
Ford is an American multinational corporation first began in 1903. It is now the second largest automaker in the U.S. and also the 5th in world auto-sales (as of 2010). Since the economic crisis in 2009, Ford has been able to reduce its debt from $33.6 billion to $14.5 billion. It was ranked # 10 on Forbes Fortune 500 in 2011.
Ford continues to be rated among the top companies in the world in terms of its corporate social responsibility; reporting by “Tomorrow’s Value: The Global Reporters.” Ford is also the only automaker among the top 25 of the 50 companies to demonstrate best practices in corporate social responsibility.
Corporate social responsibility surveys measure the performance of companies that meet globally recognized corporate social responsibility standards. To be included, companies must have a transparent commitment to sustainability.
Ford is also listed on the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes’ annual review of global sustainability leaders, and it is among companies that have been included in the DJSI’s best-in-class lists. DJSI tracks the economic, environmental and social performance of the leading sustainability-driven companies worldwide. Ford has been included in the DJSI for five years in a row and for good reason.
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