There seems to be a nearly endless list of justifications and excuses for failing to produce excellence:

The pressure of globalization means we have to cut costs.
Management wants quantity, not quality.
I’m doing the best I know how to.
In this economy – you’re kidding!
Nobody else cares. Why should I?

The reality is that promoting excellence in a team is a skill that most leaders have not learned. I would like to start by recalling a book from 1982 called In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr. It sold three million copies in its first four years and became the most widely held library book in the United States from 1989 to 2006.

By studying a number of companies they felt were practicing excellence, Peters and Waterman distilled eight common themes, which they argued were responsible for the success of the chosen corporations.

A bias for action, active decision making - 'getting on with it'. Facilitate quick decision making & problem solving tends to avoid bureaucratic control.
Closeness to the customer - learning from the people served by the business.
Autonomy and entrepreneurship - fostering innovation and nurturing 'champions'.
Productivity through people- treating rank and file employees as a source of quality.
Hands-on, value-driven - management philosophy that guides everyday practice - management showing its commitment.
Stick to the knitting - stay with the business that you know (i.e. core competences).
Simple form, lean staff - some of the best companies have minimal HQ staff. Keep overheads low.
Simultaneous loose-tight properties - autonomy in shop-floor activities plus centralized values.

In 2001, James C. Collins wrote a best-seller entitled Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't. Jim studied companies which made a leap from being (in his eyes) good to being great. He concluded the following key points:

Level 5 Leaders, leaders who have both “personal humility” and “professional will”, are not rock-star leaders whose companies go into decline when they move on. They are diligent and hard working - more bite than bark. Celebrity leaders often work for a time, but appear to be damaging in the long run, because they don’t create sustained results.

Get the right people on the bus - that has to happen before the “what” decisions are taken. That can change if you have the right people, but the wrong people will certainly make the enterprise fail.
You must always be willing to “confront the brutal facts”. Don’t ignore reality in favor of what your hopes reflect it to become. Only by having accurate information can you achieve success.
The “Hedgehog concept” means having a simple, extremely clear concept of what their business is. That business is something they can:

Make money at
Be passionate about, and
Be the best in the world at

Collins also writes about “The Three Circles”:

A culture of self-discipline is critical, because it creates an environment where people work within a defined system, and yet, because the confines of the system are known, gives them more freedom to act within that system.
Technology is an accelerator, not an agent of change. Good companies use it to execute better, but it won’t save a mediocre company.
“The Flywheel” refers to the idea of momentum - keep pushing in one direction and you’ll build up a lot of it that will help you to overcome obstacles. Momentum is built a little bit at a time - it’s not a dramatic, revolutionary change, but constant, diligent work.

The greatest overlaps in ideas I see between the two books is the emphasis on simplicity, both in business concept and in structure. They serve a company well in highly competitive environments and allow a company to make quick decisions in a world where speed is important.

Walter Isaacson wrote a highly enlightening biography of the late Steve Jobs. The Jobs approach also led to simplicity and excellence. Steve streamlined decision-making at Apple to its absolute minimum. Anyone could pitch something to Steve, and if he liked it, it happened – not after months of studies and board meetings, right away.

When people proved worthy of his trust, Steve gave them enormous autonomy. Steve worshiped simplicity. Much of what makes iPods, iPhones and iPads such beloved devices is the totally intuitive, simple interfaces and designs. Steve wouldn’t allow any of his devices to have an on-off button because it was unnecessary in his opinion.

Steve was uncompromising in his own work and expected anyone around him to be the same. He only wanted people who were inspired to the point of fanaticism about what they were doing. He didn’t blame those who weren’t, but he didn’t want them around to sap the energy of the high-performers.

Here is a short clip of Isaacson talking about Steve Jobs:

Jobs understood what he wanted to do and why it was unique. In his case, it was to provide a total package solution: hardware, operating system, software, peripherals, etc. so that nobody else’s weak link could torpedo his great work. In other words, he controlled the environment.

Steve had a sense of urgency, He said that the reason he wouldn’t want to live forever is that he’d have no need to get things done quickly.

Don’t get me wrong. Steve was the kind of boss who never wanted to hear anyone complain about his or her work-life balance or stress levels. He was uncompromising. And he certainly lacked some skill in interpersonal communications. However, his strength was in setting high standards and working to achieve them no matter what the cost.

Following these three views of excellence, I would like to share a personal observation of a case where the attempt to achieve greater excellence failed. I have recently worked with a team leader who took over a new team which was performing at a mediocre level. He imposed higher standards of excellence on his team made up of people who had been there longer than he had. They raised such a mutiny that the team leader’s boss took him out of that management position because work was declining and the team was rebelling against the pressure. In order to succeed, excellence has to be appreciated from the top of an organization and needs to be applied with sensitivity while enrolling everyone in the vision.

- Herb