I was discussing
with a few of my friends and the expression “Beyond the Obvious” came in to
discussion in some context. But after the discussion was over, the expression
stuck in to my mind as a very simple yet effective description of Excellence. Excellence
can be described as continuous process of doing better than the level at which
you are doing a specific thing. If we perform at level at which we are expected
to perform we are doing the obvious thing. When we incorporate things into our
routines so that we showcase improvements and we reach next level of
excellence. So when we go beyond the obvious, we are on path of improving
excellence.
Let us check
with a few real life examples
If you are
meeting your SLAs with customer you are good but when you surpass SLAs and
showcase different level of value adds to customer without incurring any
additional cost, you have reached a new level of excellence and you will
definitely see a positive vibes from customer. You are expected to deliver to
SLA, which is obvious state, but when you go beyond, you see the difference.
I was in Tokyo
for work and travelling in a taxi from hotel to Office. Unfortunately the
driver took some wrong turn and he had to do some additional zig-zag to reach
to the destination. We observed that he has missed the route but kept quiet as
we were new to the country. After reaching the destination, the driver
apologized for little detour that he had to take and reduced some money from
the total bill. We were expecting a sorry from him being in Japan which was
kind of obvious for us but the driver went beyond and we still remember him. He
simply had raised the bar for himself.
We were
supporting multiple applications of a customer and during discussions; we came
to know that customer desperately needs a specific application to be developed
but had no money to do the same. So the Project manager from our company took
entire team in confidence and they all chipped in a few hours daily for a
period of time and built the application without the knowledge of customer and
presented the same to customer as a Christmas gift. Customer was so happy and
overwhelmed with this nice gesture of going beyond the expectation of keeping
the lights on for the applications where we were supporting. Customer not only
paid for the efforts spent by the team, but always remembered this
gesture. The relationship with customer
moved to a much higher level.
We can remember
several such examples from one’s life which reinforces the thought that when
one goes beyond what is expected from him / her individually or collectively;
he / she reaches a new level of “expected” and in the process benefits
immensely with the positive responses which are received during this process.
This is nothing but raising one’s level of excellence.
So please look
at what is expected from you at any given task / activity in the personal or
professional sphere; try to go beyond and raise your level of excellence
automatically.
