You’ve probably heard companies use phrases such as: “We want to go from being good to great.” Maybe they’ve said: “We strive for perfection, and although we’ll never reach perfection, maybe we can achieve excellence along the way.”
These organizations find some kind of a catch phrase or slogan, but the crux of what they’re trying to do is to get better. They’re trying to improve.
When we used to conduct assessments for companies 15-20 years ago, we would identify a laundry list of things they needed to improve. We’d note the 60, 80, 100 different recommendations. Some were very tactical in nature, while some needed to be addressed over a period of several months or a year. Others were very strategic in nature.
What we found was that the more we categorized, organized, and consolidated those recommendations, the less daunting the list appeared to the client, the more manageable the list was to address.
Now, the maximum number of top priority recommendations we typically provide is 20, and more likely we’ll have 5-10 key focus areas. So, if you want to get better, if you want to become great, if you want to achieve excellence – particularly as an individual – identify some broad but important areas of focus. Here are 3 quick examples:
Could You Communicate Better? This could involve improving your communication skills, your business writing effectiveness, being more intentional about the words you use or more cognizant of your body language and tone of voice.
Could You Become a Better Planner? You could identify what needs to be done by when, what your priorities may be. Then, lay out your work over a period of days or weeks or – for big projects – over months in order to ensure you’re not having to scramble at the end of a project to meet the deadline.
Could You Better Prepare Your Customers? Do you send information to the customer expecting an immediate review or quick turnaround? Instead, lay out what the process is going to look like for the customer, what you expect of them, what they can expect of you, when those activities will happen. Lay it out so the customer’s not put in a position of having to be ultra responsive to you without any forewarning.
Identify a few broad but important areas where you can be better. Then use them as an ongoing focal point to continuously improve, to seek excellence.
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