What is excellence? It is a vague, unreachable concept? Is it something that can be attained? Is it an ideal that you can get closer and closer to without ever actually reaching it? I'm not sure but there are some things that I do know about excellence.
1. Bill & Ted had a most excellent adventure.
Does this mean that there is excellent, more excellent, and most excellent? The world continues to ponder this on a late night with take out pizza and beverage of choice.
2. God is excellent.
Studying Paul's letter to the Romans helps to define this. My Ladies’ Bible study at church is studying Romans. Fairly intense as far as theology and doctrine goes but actually pretty close in structure to modern logical writings.
3. I may be obsessed with excellence.
At work, I want to have operational excellence. I want to run my house with operational excellence. I want to operate in an excellent manner. What does that look like? It looks like proactively anticipating problems before they become problems and preventing them from ever becoming a problem. It looks like creating opportunities that would not have been there other wise. Catch-phrasy? Probably. But I do believe that it exists. At least it exists in the ideal state. An ideal that you can get closer & closer to, but will not reach.
And why should we pursue it if it cant be reached? I make this claim: “As Operations approach Excellence, the number of people living with hunger will approach zero.” Yes, that is a calculus statement in case you were wondering.
Operational excellence reduces costs both by eliminating waste and freeing up time, energy, and money. With the waste eliminated, you can take the time, energy, and money that would have been spent on that waste to eliminate even more waste. Or you can spend it developing new products, new processes, or relaxing so that you can be rejuvenated to start the cycle over again. Yes, operational excellence is a cycle, a spiral if you will. It is a spiral that leads to wealth creation. Wealth creation leads to diminished costs for living at the same standard. Diminished cost of living at the same standard leads to lowering the poverty line. Yes, I will say this: operational excellence can reduce or eliminate world poverty and hunger.
And, for the record, I don’t think that operational excellence has enough wiggle room in its definition to make any allowance for corporate crap, greed, abuse, or any other negative aspect. Operational excellence represents everything that is good.
4. I have little time and patience with people who do not desire excellence.
I have a problem with people who think "good enough" is "good enough". What happens to the C- student's bridge? What happens with the D+ student's circuit design? Would you feel safe riding in a car designed by a person who was more concerned with making it through the day than by perfecting his craft? Do you want to ride in an airplane designed by a person who failed fatigue analysis? (*For the uninitiated, metal fatigue is a leading cause of airplane failures and deaths.)
Now, here's my point. I don’t think that I know when to give grace when:
1) Something does not happen in an excellent fashion. How lovely it would be to realize that trying for excellence is good enough. Sometimes we fail because we live in a broken world. There is no point in staying angry over it because we will continue to live in a broken world until the end comes. I need to learn that lesson for the sake of my sanity.
2) I interact with people who do not have the same standards that I do. I think some people would call me “anal.” I actually think that there are quite a few people who would call me “freaking anal.” At least if they knew the full extent of my anal-ness. How do I encourage them to pursue excellence without condemning them for not? And that, my friends, is a lesson that I desperately want and need to learn. I do not want to “loose friends and alienate people.”
And that’s all I have to say on that.
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