Stop Glamorizing the Pursuit of Excellence
The pursuit of excellence insults those who like things as they are.
Short-term thinkers reject the pursuit of excellence. Stagnant organizations die because the pursuit of excellence hurts at first. Mediocrity persists because average effort is comfortable.
Hierarchy dislikes the pursuit of excellence because it offends snobbery.
4 alerts for the pursuit of excellence:
Alert #1: Choose how you show up.
Anger might motivate change, but there’s no advantage to coddling it. Be kind, compassionate, and positive. Smile while you poke the box.
The pursuit of excellence begins with frustration and succeeds with optimism.
Alert #2: Anticipate resistance.
Those most invested in the present resist the future. The longer someone has been with a stagnant organization, the more resistant to change they become.
Those comfortable with the status quo hope you fail. Some sabotage your efforts.
Alert #3: Don’t demonize.
Don’t make enemies of the people you expect to support your pursuit. When you complain about the status quo you insult the people who built it.
Use the present as a platform. Honor hard-working people. Focus on benefits while acknowledging challenges.
“We can improve,” is better than, “You’re all losers.”
Alert #4: Empower champions.
Go with believers. Don’t spend all your time convincing detractors. Encourage early adopters. Be patient with others.
Find a champion with authority who believes in what you’re doing. The more people your efforts impact, the higher your champions must be. If there’s a board, enlist at least one influential member to support and guide your efforts.
Which idea in this post can you practice today?
What have you learned about excellence?
Read, “In Search of Excellence.”
Excellent feedback! Thank you so much! It’s such a great reminder as we fight the good fight 🙂 have enjoyed your post immensely.
Thanks, Sara. Onward and upward. A good word is fuel in the tank.
Okay, this post was meant for me personally!
“The pursuit of excellence insults those who like things as they are.”
Thank you for stating what should have been obvious to me. Message received!
Even though “excellence” is one of our company’s values, those who pursue it are often treated as complainers who don’t abide by the “one team” mold.
Organizational dynamics are so interesting.
It’s interesting that people who pursue improvement can be viewed as complainers. Part of it the fault of people who naturally resist improvement. The other part – the part within our control – is how we show up. I’ve been guilt of letting passion be the reason I trample on people. The other one that drags me down is spending too much time with detractors and not enough with true believers. Both groups are important.
Continuous improvement in the pursuit of excellence
Resistance is inevitable. You have to address the most vocal resisters. Engage with them directly: listen to their concerns, explain the necessity of the change, and ask for their support. Encourage them to stop dwelling on objections and commit to giving the change an honest effort for three months.
One of my takeaways from your comment is, “Ask for their support.” Maybe they don’t need to be convinced 100%. Just ask them to get on board. I wonder if asking, “What needs to be true for you to support this effort,” would be helpful.
Hopefully you have some subscribers from different governments/parties (even from different countries.
A good message for all of us.
🙂
Hi Nik. Most of my readership is in the US. However, I have readers in every country on the globe. Not many in the Artic, but still a few.
So this made me stop and think. What does excellence look like in our organization. As a start-up almost ready to release a product, life can be chaotic, with quickly shifting priorities and decisions. Let’s call it organic vs. linear. We’re young enough to not know enough about what excellence might mean for any given process.
I’m mulling over how to do good when you don’t know what that is and it changes?
Maybe at a high-level it’s about values. Defining and measuring against company values.
At a lower level it’s about prioritizing. Often good enough serves the company better than shiny perfection.
Your reflection is so useful, Elizabeth. Thanks for sharing it. When you went to values it made sense. The source of clarity and stability during turbulence is clarity of the mission and certainty about values. It’s pretty hard to make decisions when one or both of those are missing. Thanks again for sharing your thoughts.
What does excellence look like to the customer?
Great question, Paul.