The World Class Diamond model is the product of a three-year research project jointly conducted among HT2, Warwick Business School, and Warwick Manufacturing Group at the University of Warwick. Alistair Morrison, managing director of Echelon explains: "Organisations must improve continuously if they're to survive, and measuring their progress over time and benchmarking against the marketplace are powerful drivers of progress."

Alan Betts, managing director of HT2 and also an internationally published author, a visiting professor at the University of San Diego, and a doctoral researcher at Warwick University, comments: "Becoming world class is a goal many organisations aspire to - but we wanted to know how to define and measure this accolade. So, in conjunction with Warwick University, we uncovered two key questions that all world- class organisations ask themselves: 'How are we doing?' and 'How can we get better?'"

"The results of this research project produced the World Class Diamond model - and it can help organisations to answer these two key questions and establish a 'World- Class' standard", he says. "Using this information, we can establish how far along the 'World-Class' journey an organisation currently is and look to highlight opportunities to change current practice to improve upon this score. We consider a world-class organisation to be an organisation that is as good as anyone, anywhere in the world and better than any organisation in the locality."

The model recognises that there are several levels at which an organisation can be considered world class. The 'World-Class' approach allows for departments or functions to be measured as separate entities, giving a more detailed picture of the organisation's strengths and weaknesses.

Unlike other measures of its kind, 'World Class' establishes a benchmark against the standard itself, not other organisations' scores. The model is already in use across the globe and in a range of industry sectors. Alistair Morrison says: "Unlike other business improvement models, 'World Class' does not prescribe the actions your organisation must take in order to become world class. Rather, in order to develop strategically coherent plans, it seeks to understand the wider context within which your organisation is working."

"The World Class Diamond provides us with a rigorous and highly valuable research methodology that will enable us to offer our clients more detailed insight that will help them continue to build the performance and agility of their organisations while, at the same time, delivering improved customer satisfaction and ROI", Morrison concludes.