Seeds of Excellence – Thirteen at First

A packet of cards, in an envelope like a seed packet, is used to represent my values. These values are what I think are necessary to sow seeds of excellence professionally and personally. I selected a dozen, although there are many more. These had particular and personal meaning when selected and shared with others in 2004.

The seed packet provides instructions on how to plant, nurture, and maintain excellence. How would you plant, nurture, and maintain excellence?

The thirteen seeds of excellence, which I will write about individually, are: gratitude, hope, wonder, kindness, encouragement, learning, creativity, nurture, service, faith, connectedness, attentiveness, and responsibility.

Posted August 30th, 2006 in Seeds of Excellence

Struggle as a Value

Several years ago, I identified values for my life and work. In a presentation, I called them seeds of excellence. One I omitted might be struggle.

I read in Leadership in a blog http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2006/08/scum_of_the_chu.html about an organization’s core values. Their first one was struggle. Most of us don’t want to admit our struggles, and we surely don’t want to state it plainly and explicitly as a core value.

My truth is that life requires much struggle, if we’re going to achieve excellence. For those organizations who espouse operational excellence, struggle is required. For people and for organizations, excellence is only achieved after much struggle. Then there is a mightly struggle to maintain or sustain excellence.

One company had what I call a “project mentality.” Every initiative or program was viewed as a project to be completed. There was great interest, investment, time, and energy about an operational excellence program at the beginning. After three or four years, progress was made and the program was viewed as a success.

Since that much time had elapsed, people at all levels started saying, “How much longer are we going to do this?” and “Couldn’t these resources be used better somewhere else?” and “We’ve done this well, let’s move on to something else.”

I kept reminding the leaders and the other employees that there is a constant struggle to attain, maintain, and sustain excellence. We even did an exercise using three juggling balls – one that represented excellence, one that represented profit, and another representing growth. These three aspects of any business are all necessary, and a company cannot exclude any of them. The struggle comes from seeking the proper balance. Something once attained is not complete, and requires attention to be sustained.

In our personal lives, we also struggle in finding the proper balance between excellence, success(however we define it), and growth. My struggle will continue as long as I live. What about you?

Posted August 30th, 2006 in Operational Excellence, Seeds of Excellence