What is Excellence?

Luckily, the Lord broke the silence.

“Sam, do you believe in excellence?”

“Of course I do. Don’t we all strive for excellence?”

“Some people do. However, many executives fear excellence, initiative, individuality, and similar traits because they do not know how to harness such traits. Many executives might try to put on a brave face, but I know what they are thinking inside, and they are often questioning themselves. That is good. It is important to know your strengths, and more importantly your weaknesses. Not being able to strive for greatness is a reason why so many businesses focus on mediocrity rather than face the challenge of greatness.”

“Lord, I heard something years ago that really resonated with me. I think it was excellence is not an act but an addictive habit. The things you do the most because you love doing it are the things you will do the best.”

I wrote a book review for In Search of Excellence. I loved the book, not necessarily for the content, but for the title. Excellence is a constant search. It might be that people are trying to be the best at something, like an athlete or a musician. The desire to be excellent is a never-ending process with no end line to prove you have reached the highest level of excellence. Once you reach excellence, whatever that is, then what? I had an athlete friend who wanted to run a three-hour marathon. He trained for over a year. He finally broke the three-hour mark and then was disillusioned because he did not have a new goal to focus on. He was depressed until he took up knitting and then he was making blankets like crazy.

“Sam, greatness often entails going against the flow. It might be a tough road, but it is manageable. Those who are asked to be great are not great because they were born great or better than others, but they feel summoned to a higher calling.  This is a challenge or a call to greatness that not everyone hears. Men and women, young and old, weak and strong can all hear the calling. Do you know what ticks me off Sam?  Those who are jealous of others’ success. They have the ability themselves to be great and they are too busy being jealous that they will never reach their own true potential.”

There go the screens again. A wonderful Army recruiting poster for the Army highlighting the campaign: “Be all that you can be.”

“Son, one of the things I really look for is ability. I like the following quote about ability from Steve Jobs:

’I found that there were these incredibly great people at doing certain things, and you couldn’t replace one of these people with 50 average people. They could just do the stuff that no number of average people could do’.”

“Steve was one of the rare ones who could not be replaced with 500 average people. Luckily, there are numerous people who cannot be replaced with hundreds of average people. Sam, even though statistically it would be impossible, no one needs to be average. People set their sights on average and dream of being more without exerting the necessary effort. Imagine if everyone aimed for greatness?  Not everyone would necessarily reach greatness, but many would reach beyond average. That is one thing you can see about great Biblical leaders such as Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and Ester. They didn’t mail-it-in.”

I thought about all the times I “mailed-it-in.”  I might have been tired, or it might have been a tight deadline, but I didn’t do my best. Were my past episodes of mediocrity coming back to haunt me?

“No Sam, I look towards your future rather than dwelling in your past. Another quote I love about being optimistic in your desire to be excellent is from Stephen Covey who wrote, ’Your attitude determines your altitude.’”

I had quoted that one before, so I agreed it was a great quote.

“Sam, the primary place to change attitude is not with others, but within oneself. So many managers and leaders want to change others, when in fact they are the ones who really need to be changed. The truly excellent leaders are those who are constantly changing, evolving, learning, correcting—themselves. I would recommend that anyone who wants to become excellent should set high goals that are “stretch goals” and work their butt off to not just reach but surpass those goals. Moses’s task was to take the Israelites out of Egypt. He was not tasked to bring them to the Promised Land. He took it on himself to go further and achieve more.”

“But Lord, aren’t there examples of great leaders or managers who were torpedoed by poor employees…or maybe it was bad economics…you know that “context thing” we have been referring to?”

“Yes Sam, there are numerous examples where external variables have helped demolish the best laid plans of executives. But there are also numerous examples where an executive took external or internal variables that were destroying and organization and turned them into positives. What’s the saying when life gives you lemons, make lemonades.”

I was wondering what it would look like if the Lord made lemonade from all the lemons he could gather. But I was digressing. It had already been a long day, and it was only about an hour into the interview.

“Sam, let me get you a coffee and we can continue.

An assistant walked into the room with a cup of coffee.

“I prefer mine bla…”  I couldn’t finish my statement.

The assistant responded. “Sir, this is exactly how you like it, even the temperature you prefer.”

I took the cup and sipped. It was great. I didn’t even need to blow on it.

“Better now Sam?”

“Yes, thank you. This is great.”

“To finalize our point on excellence Sam, yes, there can be ups and downs, but it is what a leader does at both the high and low ends that will help determine how they truly succeed. Even King David, one of the greatest leaders of all time had some great high, and significant lows. I mean come-on- look at how many times others tried to kill him. Yet he kept fighting and proving them wrong. One of the keys was surrounding himself with great help, but those individuals also sometimes worked against him.  A great leader will know who is helping achieve the highs and those who will stab them in the back to push the leader to the lows. Excellence is knowing that sweet spot in the middle and leveraging yourself and those around you when you hit that sweet spot.…does that sound like what an executive today might face?”

I knew that was a hypothetical question.

Dang, this coffee was good.

I was ready to explore my next point associated with leaders.