Excellence

Excellent is not the opposite of bad. It takes lots of effort to be excellent as not bad,average and good are normally acceptable.

We often seek excellence in tough and ultimate points such as the final examinations, interviews, presentations, in court etc but rarely in normal progress.
Sometimes if you perform excellently in a normal progress activity, it appears as a waste of energy and time... "what for? who needs it?"!
A supervisor who expects excellence in his department is often considered, 'too demanding, too rigid, and hard to please' On the other hand an employee who delivers excellently will be often regarded as 'missgoodytwoshoes, push over, or boss's pet'

We fail repeatedly to make excellence a habit.

In my view, excellence has a bad side to it when performing tasks that I do not necessarily like or enjoy. When I deliver excellently in these tasks, everyone assumes am good at these tasks and high chances are next time I will be picked to perform the same tasks. Once I had to put together an annual report for an organisation, I did not enjoy the task and thought the final product could have been better with professional advice. When I explained that it could have been better, it was taken to be modesty or too hard on myself.

Excellence has also not been too kind to many in their careers. When a person delivers excellently on a role far beneath their capabilities, the recipients tend to hold the person, selfishly I think, especially if more challenging positions are outside their organisation. This is a lose lose situation as one will remain a Pawn and not exploit the Queen potential and the other who's plays a potential Queen on a Pawns position will leave the King unprotected.

At the end of the day, excellence wins by a landslide. It generates value even when it is on 'passive' state. When small not so meaningful tasks are delivered excellently, the bar is raised, we now have a new level of excellence. If a score of 5/5 was excellent we can now move 10/10 as the new point and we can move the point all the way to the sky.

It is not too late for me, for you, for all of us to seek excellence!