On Excellence

I have been thinking about excellence lately. At work, we are going through a thousand and one changes, and it's been really stressful. This week I exploded all over my boss man. He was coming at a problem in a way that totally offended me . . . because it wasn't assuming excellence in all we do. It took me most of the morning to figure out why I bit his head off. But it was because he was directing me to be less than perfect and it infuriated me. When we eventually sat down and talked about it, I voiced this to him. He said his loyalty was to "you and Paul and the team, and I wanted to protect you from all this."

Protect us? From doing our job?

Yep. That's what it came down to. It wasn't what he meant to do. He was worried and just didn't want to overburden us. But what he didn't realize is that excellence -- Excellence -- is a huge part of how I do my job. If I didn't have Excellence to do . . . then what would be the point?

In a front line leadership course I took before vacation, the teacher was talking about performance evaluations and asked why everyone thinks a meets is a bad grade. She couldn't figure out where that came from. "Where does that COME from?" Although she didn't hear me, I said "High school." Big duh on that one, Lady. Meets is a C in high school. And I was never, and will never be, a C student. Thank you very much.

If we didn't have perfection to strive towards, what would we be doing? Isn't it perfection, excellence and achievement that drives human kind forward? If we just wanted to breed and jet ski, then where would we be? The only reason to live is to continue to strive to be Great. To do everything we do, as best as we can do it. To be more better. And this isn't about being the Best in the World (although that still underpins a lot), it's about doing what I do completely. To the best of my ability.

Isn't that a great phrase? To the best of my ability.

Always and completely.