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The One Place You Should Excel

25 January, 2018 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Excellence

Managers talk a lot about excellence.  It monopolises their communication.

They rattle on about:

  • Being best of breed
  • Transcending the top quartile
  • Utilising best practice
  • Becoming best-in-class, world-class and maybe even intergalactic-class

I’m sure you have heard something similar along the way.

But it is only talk

There are a handful of problems with all this chatter.

  1. Excellence is hard work. There are vanishingly few people who are truly world-class at anything. Interestingly, the only one that I have ever met didn’t feel that compelled to tell everybody about it.
  2. You can’t be world-class at everything. You have to decide what you want to excel at. Most managers aren’t very good at deciding where they are not going to be outstanding.
  3. It is deeply uninspiring. Urging people on to excellence shows a complete lack of imagination or intelligence and the poor fools on your shop floor know it.
  4. The standard is fleeting. Sooner or later somebody is going to come along and beat you.

So I’m not that impressed…

…by anybody who claims to be world-class at anything.  They might think that they have the best people, systems and processes, but my £50 says that they haven’t.  And on the off-chance that they are right and I am wrong it won’t last.

There is a difference between having a vision and being deluded.

Am I a miserable git?

Maybe, but there is one thing in your business where you could impress me.

Your process for improving your processes.

If you have that one nailed then your rhetoric might become a reality.  Now that would be something to brag about…

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Image by Gareth Hector

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: best practice, rhetoric

About the Author

James Lawther
James Lawther

James Lawther is a middle-aged, middle manager.

To reach this highly elevated position he has worked in numerous industries, from supermarket retailing to tax collecting.  He has had several operational roles, including running the night shift in a frozen pea packing factory and carrying out operational research for a credit card company.

As you can see from his C.V. he has either a wealth of experience or is incapable of holding down a job.  If the latter is true this post isn’t worth a minute of your attention.

Unfortunately, the only way to find out is to read it and decide for yourself.

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