MAKE QUALITY PERSONAL.
Demonstrate a passion for excellence and take pride in the quality of everything you touch and everything you do. Have a healthy disdain for mediocrity. Good is not good enough. Always ask yourself, “Is this my best work?”
Work - a career- is a major part of most people’s lives. Of course, people need to have financial resources, but beyond that work can provide a wonderful sense of belonging to a team, of accomplishing great things, of positively impacting the lives of many. So how do we want to spend that huge part of our lives?
To the extent we can find a way to make a positive impact on our own futures and the lives of others, should we not attempt to maximize that impact? How would one do that in a half-hearted way? Do we want to spend a bunch of our time and energy in half measures that result in poor quality and mediocre outcomes?
Is good good enough? No! Imagine a surgeon who carries a blasé’ attitude, who doesn’t really want to put the energy and drive into their work. Sound like someone you want digging around in your innards? Are you going to recommend that surgeon to others? Or think of a pilot who really wasn’t into their training and barely paid enough attention to scrape by with the minimum test scores to gain their license; who doesn’t really think the entire pre-flight check list is necessary every time. Yikes! I want my surgeon, my pilot, my barber, my contractor, my server (restaurant, or whatever service) and my teammates to all be folks who pursue excellence, refine their craft and work to continue to improve over time. Personally, I want to be a worthy teammate and to do that I must strive for excellence and I must drive to learn, learn, learn and improve, improve, improve!
Family and social relationships constitute another major part of life. Are we all shooting for being the most mediocre parent, spouse or friend we can be? Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? What about hobbies, why even do them if you are not trying to improve and to get excellent at them? OK, don’t ask me about my golf game!
Observing excellence in any endeavor is a joy. When Michael Jordan was an active NBA player in his prime watching him was more like watching art in motion than someone playing a sport. Same with Tiger Woods. These two were far beyond working for money – what they showed was an amazing drive to be the very best. Michelangelo couldn’t NOT do his best and when you see the Sistine Chapel or The David, you know it did not occur to him to stop short of amazing excellence.
But you don’t need to be on the world stage to drive to achieve greatness in your efforts. The joy can come to you observing your own top-quality work and working with others to do amazing things. All you need to do is ask yourself, “Is this the best I can do? Is this my best work?” Honest answers to these questions and working to get the answers to be “yes” will lead to great things for you and for many.