Is excellence a bastion of few? or
any one can achieve it? This question appears in the mind of many and when we
read various contradicting opinions expressed in many mediums create confusion
rather than clarifying the doubts. Can someone live using excellence as life
guide?
A simple three step approach applied
would take us on the road to excellence for sure. The steps are Courageous
Vision, Comprehensive Planning and Relentless Execution.
Courageous
Vision; we all know that to achieve anything we need to have a vision, it is not
sufficient to have a wish but VISION. There is a lot of difference between
wishing something and having a vision about something. When we call something
our wish, we typically depend on someone outside us to fulfill the same and hope
that things outside us will fall in place fulfilling the wish. However when we
call something as our vision, then there is a lot of involvement from self to
make it happen; significant mindshare is given by the person who is visioning a
specific thing. One plans actions to make it happen, one connects with external
world to explain the vision and makes positive efforts in obtaining their
support to achieve the final outcome. I have added Courageous adjective to vision and believe that it is very
important. If our vision is easily achievable, it really does not inspire us to
do any special efforts; it does not challenge us and does not help us to
increase the level of excellence. e.g. if the organization has a vision of
continuous growth but at a much less rate than what competition is growing;
then although the vision emphasizes that we need to grow continuously, this
typically can be achieved without really changing current level of excellence.
Hence we need to express our vision in the form that questions status quo, it
challenges us to achieve more than what we are achieving today, it should
provoke our thinking to do the things differently and it should compel us to do
the things at a higher level of excellence. Expressing vision to do these
things actually takes the person to a very uncomfortable zone and needs a lot
of courage on his part to express and commit to this vision. That is the reason
why COURAGEOUS VISION is the first step to improve your level of excellence.
It is not sufficient just to express
the vision; it needs to be understood, interpreted and operationalized for its
realization. These things do not happen automatically and lot of planning and
execution to the plan, goes in with the same. PLANNING COMPREHENSIVELY is the
key for a better execution and improves the probability of success
significantly. It allows us to get to the details, understand possible problems
in every step and prepares us to avoid them or enables a plan B in case plan A
fails in some unforeseen circumstances. Many times we plan at high level and
try and address the situations on the ground as and when they come mostly in
the reactionary fashion. We hope that everything will fall in place and we are
not really prepared for many of the possible distractions/diversions that might
occur on the way. As soon as one such thing comes to our notice, we try and
figure out what is the action we need to take to avoid the distraction; many a
times we need to do a compromise and deviate from our final outcome or throw in
a significantly large quantum of resources (than desired) to achieve the final
outcome. We will not be able to increase our level of excellence as desired. If
we plan with great details on all aspects, it really helps us to identify the
possible diversions/distractions and keep our actions ready in case such a
distraction occurs and we are able to achieve the outcome improving excellence
to the desired level (better than the current level)
It
is important to have a challenging vision, it is necessary to plan your actions,
but it is extremely important that we execute on the comprehensive plans based
on courageous vision. Unless we are able to execute; no matter what ever
obstacles we encounter, no matter what ever diversion we may face, no matter
what ever wastage gets created due to unknown things; we will not be able to
achieve our vision. We need to build that rigor which will help us build the rhythm
of execute-monitor-correct-execute. As described in my earlier blog, we can
internalize this rigor through a bit-by-bit process and execute the plans
relentlessly. I am sure when we will reach the goal post and look back, we will
observe that we have been operating at higher level of excellence
automatically. I have taken an example of an organization, but the same is true
at individual level also so just remember three steps Courageous Vision-Comprehensive
Planning- Relentless Execution and you are on path of improving
excellence 