Mediocre is defined as, of moderate performance. It seems to me that we are moving toward mediocrity at a very fast pace and the question that comes to mind is, why and
more importantly, what can we do about it.
But before we get to the why, let’s look for proof that the statement I made is true. I always believe that you only need to look to what is happening in society to see the after effect in Corporate America. Let’s begin with our education system.
The United States has fallen to “average” in international education rankings released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, according to the AFP.
America has received scores around 500 on a scale that goes up to 1,000: 487 in math, 500 in reading and 502 in science. If we looked solely at Math and Science ratings, we would rank 47th.
When we look to our government, we see multiple signs of mediocrity. It exists in congress, in the senate and in the governmental agencies that have existed for several decades. I’m always surprised at the mediocre guides that government health care agencies publish. The agencies are loaded with expertise and have the resources to do a first-class job, but invariably they do a mediocre job, typically getting a barely passing grade and sometimes a flunking grade.
The U.S. Postal Service is on the verge of financial collapse and should eliminate Saturday delivery, close thousands of local post offices, restructure its health plan and lay off 120,000 workers to survive, according to Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe. The US Army Corps of engineers has had nothing but a history of failure, the latest of course being hurricane Katrina.
In corporate America we’ve experienced how mediocrity breeds corruption. The business world is crawling with affable, industrious, intelligent people with nothing to distinguish them from ten thousand other affable, industrious and intelligent people, but who very much would like to be rich. Except by winning the equivalent of a lottery or marrying up, their chances of becoming rich are quite poor.
In A Passion for Excellence Tom Peters writes, 
We are frequently asked if it is possible to ‘have it all’–a full and satisfying personal life and a full and satisfying, hard-working professional one. Our answer is: No. The price of excellence is time, energy, attention and focus, at the very same time that energy, attention and focus could have gone toward enjoying your daughter’s soccer game. Excellence is a high-cost item.
What can you do about it?
The first place I would start is with the organizations culture. There has to be a culture where excellence is coveted, it’s how people think about the work they do, day in and day out. Leaders need to recognize and praise that excellence at every step along the way. This means not just setting aggressive goals, but setting stretch goals. Look to Steve Jobs, he was the catalyst of the impossible.
Incorporate values that speak to excellence. Pride, determination, perseverance, passion, commitment and contribution to name just a few. Teach employees how to translate these values into actions, teach them how to behave in a way that is congruent with a life of personal and professional excellence. Praise excellence along the way and rewards those for achieving and supporting excellence. Remember, excellence is a habit, not an act, it takes perseverance.
Don’t be afraid of change, and don’t succumb to the notion if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. Approach life from a different angle, if it isn’t broken, break it and then make it better than it was before. Don’t suffer from sacred cow syndrome, remember what Einstein said, “Insanity was doing the same things over and over, yet expecting different results.”
Get your leadership team and your employees out of their comfort zones. You can’t achieve excellence if you are always doing things that make you feel comfortable, you have to get uncomfortable to see the world from a different perspective.
Finally, make the topic of excellence one that is communicated frequently. Talk about it at every meeting. Build it into your systems and processes, incorporate it into your performance management and highly reward excellence and achievement on a consistent basis. Be sure that your employees never confuse working long hours with getting results, the two are mutually exclusive. If you are effective and efficient, you are one step closer to achieving excellence.
We need to get back to the time when we were all proud of who we were and how others perceived us. The road to excellence is always under construction.
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Hello John,
you have some really valid points in this blog post. And if I might, I would like to add another one that my make the whole topic even more controverse.
I think that enforcing teamwork to each and every thing also leads to medicocrity. Don’t get me wrong I am not against team work but in many cases I wittnessed that teamwork did not go for the best solution, but for the solution that was agreed on by everyone within the team. And many time we assume that this was the best solution because everybody agreed to it.
So what is that agreement based on, a level of understanding that was common to all team members and that it not necessary always the highest and most sofisticated level that our client strives for. So the solution is probably the easiest to explain and to implement but maybe not the “dream solution”.
So in order to challenge this team decissions the has to be a devils advocate in the room that plays the bad guy and challenges this compromise, in oder to get a better result. And to be honest I like to do that because many times only by doing so I found out what motivvated the team mebers to go for “easy and fast” rather than excellent, because it would mean maybe confrontation, maybe explain why you need more budget or what ever might be the reason to decide the way they did in the first attempt.
This is why I say challenge compromise, even if a team agreed on it, to strive for the BEST.
Dieter, thank you for your insightful comments. You make an excellent observation about teamwork. What you are referencing in your comments has a lot to do with decision making. Teams often fall prey to the “Group Think” mentality and inevitably make the wrong decision. We observed this at NASA on two occasions, the first of course, being the Challenger disaster. You might be interested in reading my articles on Decision Making, we are one of a very select few that teaches an optimal decision making process.