Busy Month

It has been a busy couple of weeks and I have not put up a post in a while.  In early December the hard drive on my laptop completely died.  I could not get it going in any way.  My laptop is a Compaq Presario made by HP.  I called the HP help line and the experience was definitely an Excellence Agenda moment. Their response was incredible. They had a new hard drive to me within a week and provided full installation and reformatting support.  I will have more on that in another post.  The upshot is that I have been reloading all my software and other technical support programs that make life in today's society work.  

One of the biggest losses was an Executive Guide to An Excellence Agenda and a Workbook that I had drafted.  I am in the process of reconstructing and hope to have as a New Year's gift within the next week.

At the same time was Christmas, a busy time for everyone.  Our holidays were very busy and enjoyable.  It has been a warm winter so far and we were able to complete a whole host of family get togethers. 

I will also be making an announcement about a new consulting affiliation early in the New Year.  All in all 2011 has been a year of transition.  I am looking forward to a major push on An Excellence Agenda in 2012.

Merry Christmas (belated) and have a wonderful and prosperous New Year.

Tom Peters on Excellence

No discussion of Excellence can ignore the profound influence of Tom Peters.  In Search of Excellence, A Passion for Excellence and Thriving on Chaos are fascinating, detailed examinations of what works.  In chapter 1 of A Passion for Excellence, Tom Peters describes the four principles he believes are at the core of Excellence. They are:

• Care of Customers
• Constant Innovation
• People 
• Leadership through Managing by Wandering Around.

His key theme is that Excellence is simple, not easy, but simple. The paradox is that you have to do all of these things with a single minded dedication to doing well.  This quote struck home with me again as I reread it:

"I turns out that neither superior customer service nor constant innovation - the two sustaining edges of excellence - is built upon genius in the executive suite, sleight-of-hand techniques or mystical strategic moves on a game board that allow one to gain a five or ten year advantage over one's competitors.  Both are built, instead, on a bedrock of listening, trust and respect for the dignity and creative potential of each person in the organization."  (Page 579, Tom Peters Two Complete Books, Wings Books, (c) 1995)

As Tom Peters so eloquently points out, Excellence is about people, creating communities of excellence through listening, respect and giving people the space to be innovative and creative.  I don't think the world has changed all that much.  I think we have forgotten the basics of Excellence. We have to get back to the fact that business is about people; looking after our customers, our suppliers, our team.  Leadership is about listening, trusting and building respect.  Imagine that. Leading by listening - really listening, not just to the words, but to the meaning, and the intention of the conversation.  The problem I see in organizations every day is that everyone is so busy talking, (through emails, text messages, and meetings) that no one has the time to listen. 

The New Key Success Factors to Create An Excellence Advantage

When I attended business school, several generations ago, one of the key teachings was the ability to identify the key success factors (KSFs) of a business.  By understanding the key success factors and focussing attention on them you could, the theory went, make the business more successful.  In those days the key success factors were such things as low cost of production, proprietary technology or knowledge, distribution or pricing.  If your business or organization could master the key success factors you could dominate your industry.

We live in a different time now.  In an era of instant access to knowledge through the Internet, Google and Social Networks; information and knowledge is ubiquitous.  A competitor can have the same information and can learn as fast as we can.  In an age where finance is global, the ability to move manufacturing to lower cost markets has significantly reduced North American production capacity.  The competitive advantages of old no longer work.

I believe there are five new Key Success Factors.  I believe by mastering these five KSFs each of us as individuals and in communities of excellence can succeed in a new manner. What makes them different, is that they are personal KSFs that anybody can adopt and be successful.  More importantly, these can be scaled to the organizational level as well.  An Excellence Advantage is built with these five New KSFs in mind.

The five are:

1. Creativity,
2. The Experience,
3. Relationships,
4. Personal Leadership, and
5. Sustainability.

Creativity:  Creativity, and it's half brother Innovation are critical to success in today's economic environment.  With ubiquitous information, it is the ability to manipulate, interpret, analyse and reuse in creative and innovative ways that contribute to an excellence advantage.  Don't compete - create!  Find new ways of interacting with clients, customers and stakeholders.  Creativity is the ability to see something in your imagination and bring it to reality.  Creativity is an extraordinary and wonderful gift, and as human beings we all have it. 

The Experience:  We now live in the Experience Economy.  Our clients and customers no longer want to buy goods and services, they want to be involved in an experience that enriches them. So often we do not examine the experience we are giving.  Experience is more than just customer service, it is all the design elements and details in how we interact, interface and communicate.  In the experience economy we create opportunities for conversations. The Experience is the product. Entrepreneurs and organizations that truly understand this are unique and generate raving fans and tribes of supporters. 

Relationships: If Experience is the product, then Relationship is the distribution system. This KSF is built on the ability to create unique one on one, one to many relationships.  The Internet, social media and other technologies gives us the ability to have incredible one on one conversations with a multitude of people.  Building relationships builds the trust we need to have to conclude a transaction.  

Personal Leadership:  Seth Godin, in his book Tribes, tells us of the world's need for all of us to be leaders.  To move from a management role to a leadership position.  The tribe can be small, or it can be large, but we need to take personal care to lead in areas of our passion.  Personal leadership means taking responsibility for what goes on in our lives and with those around us.  Anyone can be a leader.  You don't have to be the boss to be the leader, in fact in most cases the boss is not the leader in many organizations. One of the greatest books on leadership was written around 540 AD by St. Benedict, called The Rule. Reading the Rule of St Benedict opens one up to the real meaning of listening, being responsible, being reasonable and also being humble.  Personal leadership demands humility. 

Sustainability:  The last KSF is sustainability.  The world needs each of us to find ways to lower our ecological footprint while maintaining our financial, emotional and spiritual sustainability.  Sustainability is not just a good thing to do for the environment, it is a great way to do business and reflects your personal leadership commitment. 

At the core of An Excellence Agenda are Communities of Excellence, practising the New KSFs to develop and create an Excellence Advantage.  In future posts we'll link all the elements together into a management framework.

Excellence Agenda Interview

This past Monday morning I had a call from a colleague, David Cohen  inviting me to guest on a one hour teleclass scheduled for Wednesday evening.  It seems his planned guest had been in a bicycle accident and was unavailable and he needed a replacement in a hurry!  David really liked the Excellence Agenda concept and thought it would be great for the class.  This teleclass is offered by Alterna Credit Union  as a way of reaching out to their small business and entrepreneur clients.  The class offers an opportunity to connect with peers, get some one on one coaching on a topic that can help their business.  So Wednesday night we did the one hour teleclass.

It was really great.  Firstly, David, is a great host.  He makes his guests, me included, feel comfortable and his questions let you explore ideas and get into a conversation.  Alterna makes it easy for their clients to connect using a toll free teleconferencing system.  The participants asked great questions and we really got into the discussion. I was sorry to see the hour come to an end. One of the great lessons that I got from the discussion is that An Excellence Agenda works for all sizes of businesses, from one person self employed entrepreneurs, to mature organizations.  It was wonderful to hear people take the concept and run with it. 

Congratulations to both Alterna and David for making this happen.  Check out David's site for his weekly radio show Small Business, Big Ideas.  I will be interviewed on the show in January on the Excellence Agenda concept and will post the link here.  Check out Alterna for their unique focus on building and promoting small business and entrepreneurship. 

The Artistic Director

Deep in my past I was a classically trained musician. I played oboe, the instrument that Samuel Pepys called, " an ill wind that nobody blows good". I played in both orchestras and chamber ensembles. I much preferred chamber music because each player is one to a part, yet you are part of a whole. I moved on into arts management and worked with symphony orchestras and ballet training school.

One of the unique aspects of arts organizations is that they are structured differently from other businesses.  They have an artistic director. The role of the artistic director is to cultivate the Excellence Agenda for the company. They are intimately involved with both the Vision/Change Agenda and the Mission/Sustaining Agenda of the organization. The Artistic Director is, in fact, the Champion of the Excellence Agenda. The company is only as good at its ability to perform to the level of the Excellence Agenda. Every performance is unique, some are better than others, all of them may be excellent!

The role of management, in this structure, is to create the environment in which the Excellence Agenda can be deployed.

There is a similar structure in film production. The Director is the keeper of the vision or whole concept of what the film will be.  The actors and the production team work to support that vision.

In sharing the concept of the Excellence Agenda with colleagues, it has occurred to me that we need to look at our organization with an Artistic Director lens. Who in your organization is the keeper of the Vision and the Mission? How well is that Vision/Mission articulated or shared? How well understood is it by the rest of the production team? Look around this week and identify the Champion of the Excellence Agenda in your organization. If you can't find one, maybe you have a gap that needs addressing.

Update on An Excellence Agenda

Today's post is on the progress of the Excellence Agenda Project launched in mid-September. 

I am pleased to report that the web site and the weblog are both getting excellent traffic.  The blog now has readers from Canada, Russia, Germany, the UK and the US.  It gets regular hits and the momentum is building nicely. 

Recent posts include conceptual models of an Excellence Agenda, posts on personal Excellence Agendas, and Managing the Gap.  The most popular posts are Meagan's Story and Caelan's Story, which tells me the blog needs more stories! Megan's Story was passed on to Metro Customer Service office and was referenced in their management newsletter.  If you have any examples of an Excellence Agenda that you think might make a good story for the blog feel free to contact me through the website: an-excellence-agenda.com

I am currently working with one client on an Excellence Agenda project and in negotiations with  three potential clients to do an Excellence Agenda project with them.

Upcoming topics for posts will include comments on Leadership and Management, the New Key Success Factors, Mediocrity and some case studies of excellence.  Other coming attractions: A Managers Guide to An Excellence Agenda and a Kindle Book.

I was one of the presenters at the ALI conference on Performance Measurement and Management in Government on October 18th.  The presentation was very well received.  The Conference was very impressive.  Great organization and terrific speakers.  Based on the response to the presentation in October, I have been invited back to present at the ALI conference on social media in government to be held in March.  I will post the link as I get more information.  The presentation from the 18th is posted on the website: an-excellence-agenda.com/Clients.html

I will be presenting a keynote on the New Key Success Factors at the Brockville Chamber of Commerce Breakfast on Thursday, November 24th at the Brockville Golf and Country Club.  Registration starts at 7:30 am, breakfast at 8:00 am and you are out by 9:00!  For more information contact the Brockville Chamber of Commerce here: Brockville Chamber of Commerce.

I am looking for additional potential sites for an Excellence Agenda demonstration project.  As well, I would be pleased to present An Excellence Agenda to any workgroup, team or management.  Feel free to contact me with any ideas or suggestions.

An Artful Life

One day I was thinking about my own life and how could I benchmark excellence in what I do day to day.  Every day I, like everyone else, faces challenges and obstacles that impact the outcomes for the day.  I realized that there was no "magic" number or metric that I could use that would say; today was successful!

I decided there had to be a some kind of way of intuitively recognizing if the day had been excellent or not.  After some thought, over some weeks, I came up with the Artful Life.  Every night as I review the day I ask myself one question:

If today was a painting, would I sign it?


This one question puts the whole day into perspective for me.  I realized through this exercise that my life is a canvas.  What I do every day is part of the mural of my life.  If at the end of the day, I feel good enough about the day that I can sign it, I can go to sleep knowing I have done my best.  If not, then I recognize the areas where I did not meet my standards and resolve to do better next time.

This exercise then led to additional thoughts about how I live my life.  Is my life an artful expression.  When I am looking to buy something, I now look at it from an Artful Life perspective.  Will this object add to the quality of my life, or is it just stuff?  I look around and my life is filled with stuff that does nothing to add to an Artful Life for me.  As I think about it more, I realize that stuff contributes to mediocrity, to feeling overwhelmed with the maintenance and the storage of it all.

I also began to see that the handmade pottery from a local potter was something that made my life and world better.  I now use a fountain pen instead of a ballpoint because of the way it makes everything I write more special.  I am looking to renew my wardrobe with fewer, better made clothes that will last longer with classical good looks.

Last Christmas I bought a game system.  I thought this was a great purchase because I could watch Bluray discs and play the up to the minute games.  Other than play bluray discs, I do not have the time to play video games.  Moreover, I can't figure out how to play the games I do have!  In short, this purchase did little to add to an Artful Life.  I would have been better to buy a bluray disc player and be done with it!

In evaluating what we have around us, what we need and what we desire;  what will add to the quality of our life?  What do we really need to paint a fabulous picture that at the end of every day we are willing to sign it?

An Excellence Agenda Conceptual Model

In a discussion with a colleague recently, I started sketching a conceptual model of An Excellence Agenda.  I decided to turn it into a proper slide that can be shared in presentations.  So here it is.

An Excellence Agenda is a high level umbrella that articulates an outcome oriented mandate that describes the enduring status that an organization wishes to maintain.  This approach allows for the inclusion of high order outcomes, guiding principles and values, and the ability to link the mandate of an organization to an implementation and performance framework.

There are two sub-agendas:  the Sustaining Agenda and the Change Agenda.  The implementation of these agendas is guided by the Strategic Plan, which provides the linkage between the goals and implementation priorities of the two parallel agendas.  The Strategic Plan articulates clear goals and objectives and is time based.

The Sustaining Agenda represents the "meat and potatoes" business of any organization or company.  These are the activities that deliver the day to day outputs that contribute to the ongoing development of the Excellence Agenda.  The Sustaining Agenda is guided by the Mission, the key executive role is management, and there are specific business/operational plans that management uses to monitor progress.

The Change Agenda represents the initiatives that are required to move the organization forward.  The Change Agenda is guided by the Vision, the key executive role is a leadership role, and there are project plans that management uses to monitor progress.

The foundational base is the Performance Measurement Framework or Strategy that gathers the data, and does the analysis to tell the performance story of all three Agendas and the progress on the Strategic Plan. The PMF is the glue that binds the whole process together.

What makes the Excellence Agenda different from a Strategic Plan is that the Excellence Agenda provides a rigour in the identification of the enduring outcomes that an organization is mandated to contributes to.  This is bedrock.  The Strategic Plan will be updated over time.  Activities and outputs in the Sustaining Agenda and the Change Agenda will undergo regular updates but will always contribute to the Outcomes in the Excellence Agenda.

The Excellence Agenda, with the Performance Measurement Framework are the enduring pieces of the "sandwich".  The filler of the Sustaining and Change Agendas can be modified to fit the menu - but the bread is always the same!

Performance Measurement and Management for Government Conference

I just spent Tuesday and Wednesday this week at the Performance Measurement and Management for Government Conference.  The conference was organized by ALI Conferences.  I have never been to one of ALI's conferences before, but was impressed.  As a speaker, we had great facilities, the technology worked and the participation level from the group was extraordinary.  We had about 45 in total at the conference, and because of the size the conference turned more into a workshop than a series of presentations.  The sessions were informal, interactive and really great.  Over the two days I attended, you could see the participants take in the information and start to apply it to their own situations.

From the municipal space there were attendees from four municipalities.  I will post the presentation from City of Brockville on my website here: Clients and Resources.  In talking with the organizers, there is an interest in the possibility of doing a Performance Measurement for Local Government conference.  I will keep you updated!

Be the Excellence You Want to See

“We must become the change we want to see.”  Mahatma Gandhi

Gandhi's quote, above, reminds us that if we want to see change in the world, that we need to demonstrate or be an example of the change we want to experience.  If we wish to get more love, we need to give more love.  If we wish to see more prosperity, we need to promote prosperity.  

In the same way, if we wish to experience excellence in the world around us, we need to demonstrate and promote excellence in our own lives.  In my own life, there are areas that are more excellent and areas that are less excellent.   My desk is a case in point.  One of the joys of a messy desk is all the great discoveries I make!   There are many areas in my life where I have an ongoing excellence journey.  Some areas in life are just more excellent than others.  That means I can have different excellence targets for different aspects of my excellence agenda.  It gives me the freedom to accept that there are areas of growth and development, and areas of high functionality.

As you start this week, what are the areas where you have natural excellence?  How will you share that with the world?  Are there areas of clean-ups where you can continue to demonstrate a willingness to promote excellence, at a lower target level?  What is your excellence agenda for this week?

Upcoming Events

I will be speaking on performance measurement at the Performance Measurement  and Management for Government Programs event being held in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada next week.  I am co-presenting with Dave Paul from the City of Brockville on work we did to develop a comprehensive performance measurement framework for the City's Strategic Plan.  More information can be found here: Performance Measurement and Management for Government

I will also be doing a presentation for the Brockville Chamber of Commerce on The New Key Success Factors on November 24th.  When I get the details, I will post a link.

On Steve Jobs

The passing of Steve Jobs gives us all a moment to reflect on the extraordinary genius and influence he had on our world.  I first purchased a Macintosh computer in the late 1980's to do graphics for the marketing firm I was running at the time.  We went through several versions and in 1994, I brought one home, put it on a table, plugged it in and left it.  By the time I came home the next day, my ten year old son had it all figured all out and could literally make it sing.  My children use only Apple products.

I think the key to Steve Jobs genius can be summed up in four words: the stuff just worked.

Apple products move you away from needing to understand the technology - to getting stuff done. You move from process to outcome without interference from the technology.

A couple of Christmases ago I was given the book Inside Steve's Brain.  It was a fascinating exploration of how Steve Jobs created an innovation culture at Apple. Dozens of prototypes were developed and discussed and reviewed in great detail.  Then more prototypes were created until a consensus was reached on function, form and ease of use.  The user interfaces that Apple pioneered have resulted in devices that give us access to the stuff we want quickly and easily. Steve Jobs obsessed over how the product was packaged so that the consumer had a major Wow factor when they open the box.

The genius of Steve Jobs was understanding, before we realized it, what we wanted and creating the technology and devices to give us that.  One of the conclusions of the book was that Jobs has successfully transferred the innovation culture and process to Apple and that it will continue long into the future, even without him.

Jobs recognized the value of the experience.  That dedication to the customer's perspective resulted in raving fans willing to pay a premium for the products and the lifestyle he created.

His excellence approach is an inspiration to all of us.

Managing the Gap

"Ordinary people are capable of acommplishing extraordinary things."  

Barack Obama

After reviewing the concepts of An Excellence Agenda with one of my clients, she said;  "Francis, this is all great, but we are not excellent."  What my wonderful client was missing was the concept of The Gap.   The Gap is one of the basic tools for managing An Excellence Agenda.

If you have ever been frustrated, anxious, worried, angry or upset, it is probably because you are experiencing a Gap in your life.  The Gap is the difference between your expectations and your performance.  The greater the gap between your expectations and performance, the higher the level of frustration, anxiety etc.  Motivation comes when the Gap is very small - we then feel that with some additional effort, we can meet our expectations, and our performance and expectations will be aligned.

Gaps are built into our system as human beings.  We cannot get rid of the gaps, we can only manage them.   In managing An Excellence Agenda, we need to manage the gaps between our expectation:  what we believe Excellence is and the performance we see in front of us.  

There are three ways to manage the gap:

• lower our expectations
• raise the level of performance
• let go of our expectations - and work with the performance only

Lowering our expectations

  

This is often called compromise or making do, which many people resist.  There is, however, another side to this.  In a series of interviews with business leaders, virtually every business leader felt that that they were above average in abilities, decision making and accomplishments.  Our natural self regard puts us in a high achievement category.  We are, each of us, legends in our own minds.  The problem is that it isn't true, all of us are excellent in a several areas, average in others and downright dangerous in others.  Don't ask me to do brain surgery !  

One of the key ways we frustrate people as colleagues, managers and leaders, is that we believe that our personal performance is close to 100%, and we expect those around us to be at a similar level.  After all, if we can do it, so can they.  Our actual performance is actually probably closer to 80 - 90%. If we lower our personal expectation to 85% and set our acceptable performance standards at 75% we will see a huge positive impact on both ourselves and those in communities of excellence around us.  One of the keys to promoting environments in which excellence can happen is to lower our expectation levels slightly, and then celebrate like heck when those around us perform at levels that are more average.  

The result of the positive feedback is that those communities of excellence will start to perform at higher and higher levels and the accomplishment cycle goes through the roof.  

It's worth a try.

Raising performance

See note above.

Eliminating Expectations

There is another way to build excellence capacity.  That is to let go of expectations.  In Eastern Philosophy, this is seen as a key way to achieve a sense of peace and accomplishment.  By letting go of expectations, you eliminate the Gap and can free yourself up to enjoy what you are doing right now - today's current performance.  In this way you give yourself permission to be as excellent today as you can be.  Some days are really high performance days, other days are less high performance days.  The key is to let go and let excellence emerge. 

If we truly believe that everyone in our COEs, comes to the table desiring to be excellent, then we can let go and let each of them be excellent.  Where performance is suffering, then we need to understand the gap in the performance (resources, capacity, expectations, other blocks) and either accept them, or eliminate them.  Sometimes our expectations cannot be fulfilled because the environment just will not allow it.  Letting go is the only solution.

I decided several years ago that I no longer have problems in my life - only Gaps.  What gaps are you experiencing today?  Are you willing to lower your expectation?  Can you enhance performance?  What would happen if you lived in the moment and let the expectation go?

In managing An Excellence Agenda if we look at managing the Gaps, we get to let people around us be excellent in their own way.  The result is enhanced Communities of Excellence and unbelievable performance.

Caelan's Story

This week's Excellence Agenda story comes from Caelan, one of our two whippets.  In an earlier post I suggested that Mission is the foundation of the Sustaining Agenda.  This is a story about mission and perseverance, and one dog's sustaining agenda.

Whippets are born with a mission:  catch the bunny.  They are called sighthounds because if something moves - they are attracted to it and have the acceleration and speed to catch it.  The "job" (sustaining agenda) of a whippet was to catch small game for the pot.    A whippet friend of mine tells the story of one of his original females who, riddled with cancer, was still catching squirrels in the last week of her life.  The mission lives on to the end.

We got Caelan because we were looking for a small sized sighthound.  What we did not realize is that what we got was an elite athlete.  As she approached a year old, we began to see her muscles develop and how quick she was.  We got invited to a race practice, to help train her for straight racing and realized this was her natural element. (Whippets race only for fun and the straight races are 200 yards in distance.  No betting and just fun prizes.)  Caelan loves to race - this is pure pleasure for her.  Over the past few years it has been a thrill to watch her develop and she has won her share of events and has earned three Certifications.

Caelan is now seven and a half years old and the youngsters are now much faster than her.  She won't be winning any more races, and I wondered if the competitive spirit was still there. This past weekend we attended a practice and it was a lesson in the value of an Excellence Agenda.  Caelan did three runs and it was like watching three years drop from her age.  Caelan was totally into her game.

An Excellence Agenda is not just for people, it is part of evolution and nature.  Caelan has an Excellence Agenda based on her natural athletic ability.  The ability to run at 35 miles per hour and to have total focus on her mission of catching the lure is her "job".  The fact that she will not win races against the younger dogs does not diminish her commitment to her agenda.  The ability to show up for the game and deliver her best effort is what counts. It is part of who she is as a whippet - her true being.

How often have we given up on our Excellence Agenda because we felt we could not compete?  How often have we not gotten into the game and lost the chance to be a part of something bigger because we could not be the "winner"? How often have we excluded others from expressing their Excellence Agenda because they would not be a "winner"?  By building on our community members individual excellence and abilities, we are building a community of excellence where everyone's contribution counts.

An Excellence Agenda is about being in the game.  It is about living our personal Vision and our Mission.  It is about contributing to communities of excellence, where every individual's abilities counts, that makes the world a better place.

Caelen was born with her mission; it is part of the breed, the encoded DNA of the dog.  Watching the new puppies at practice go after the lure, you can see the instinct coming into play.  This past weekend Caelan was living her mission, and living her Excellence Agenda.  And I learned a valuable lesson about showing up, being totally engaged and the value of contributing the best of your ability.

PS:  Whippets don't have owners, they have staff.

Seth Godin on The Forever Recession and the Coming Revolution

On his blog this morning Seth Godin posted this commentary on the Recession and the new world:

The Forever Recession

The concept of an Excellence Agenda and promoting/fostering Communities of Excellence, are part of the coming revolution.  Communities of Excellence can be the platform for "impromptu innovation and inspiration that involves connections between and among people."  And yes it is totally unlike factory work.  I believe that to succeed in this new world, an Excellence Agenda and fostering Communities of Excellence are vital.  The future is based on an ability to leverage you own personal excellence in environments that promotes creativity, innovation, experimentation and growth.  Computers, the Internet and software give us the tools that can leverage our creativity and distribute excellence in a real time world.  As Seth Godin suggests, this is a world of collaboration, not competition.  It is a world of multiple connections to different Communities of Excellence for different projects, gigs or creations.

Not a bad place to be at all.

Excellence vs. Perfection

I have been thinking a lot about this topic over the past few days.  I am not sure entirely what to say, just that it is important to say it. So here goes...

There is a profound difference between Excellence and Perfection. They are not the same things at all.

Excellence is an outcome.  We never achieve excellence, we contribute to it.  It is like healthy children or healthy food - we need to constantly strive to work towards healthy children or food.  Profitability, likewise is an outcome that we continue to work towards.

Philip Crosby in his book "Quality is Free", says that we do not have to be perfect to have zero defects.  What we have to do is meet the requirements.  Excellence can be defined as meeting or exceeding the requirements of your clients, customers, stakeholders or fans.  That is different than perfect.

Perfection is a target, a destination. Perfection is a how much. Perfect (the root of perfection) has two meanings.  One meaning of perfect is something without blemish.  As in "this rose is perfect".  This is the commonly accepted definition of perfect, but it leads us down a blind path of trying to achieve the impossible.  A study of Chaos theory or dynamic systems tells us that there is nothing in nature, including a rose that is without blemish.  Trying to achieve perfection can drive you nuts!

The second definition of perfect is that something has everything it needs to be what it needs to be.  When a baby is born with five toes on each foot and five fingers on each hand, we say it is perfect.  If we take this definition of perfect, we an see that many of our systems, organizations and businesses have everything they need to be what they need to be.  That does not mean they are without flaw or requiring development and improvement.  It does, however, give us space to be human, to listen, to be leaders and to respond to changing environments.

How do you know if you are Excellent?  You need to compare your actual results against the targets of the Performance Metrics in your Excellence Agenda. Then you need to validate your results with the people you serve.  Seth Godin suggests that if you have absolutely raving fans - then you know you have achieved some form of Excellence.

Excellence is a journey that we take.  Perfection, as in without blemish, takes us away from what is important.  Perfection, as in ensuring that we have everything we need to be what we are supposed to be - is a target we can all aim for.

An Excellence Agenda Fundamentals

An Excellence Agenda is based on the following fundamentals;

1. Excellence starts with individuals.  Every individual possesses unique talents and abilities that allow them to be excellent.  Every individual has a desire to matter to others because of those unique talents and abilities.  That results in a personal Excellence Agenda - an approach to how we are going to express our excellence and matter to the world.  However, each of us has areas of unexcellence and we therefore seek out other individuals who can balance us and give us excellence in all areas of our lives.   That leads to...
2. Communities of excellence.   A community is a group of people with an affinity or bond.  The affinity can be demographic, psychographic or utility based.   A demographic affinity could be a bond based on geographic location, family, professional interests, education, age, income etc.  A psychographic affinity is based on how we see ourselves and our self image.  We will associate with others who have a similar sense of attitudes, outlooks and values.  A utility based affinity or bond is when people create a community of a common sense of value delivered to the members.  A community of software users for instance may have a spectrum of demographics or psychographics, but they all share in the value delivered by the software.  Each of us belongs to a variety of communities of excellence, including our families, our workplaces, our clubs and even community and religious organizations. (For the balance of this posting we will look at communities of excellence within an organizational framework.  We will come back to individual Excellence Agendas in another post.)
3. Every community of excellence has an Excellence Agenda.  This excellence agenda sets out what the community aspirations are, and how it will strive to meet those aspirations.  At an organizational level the Excellence Agenda is often articulated in the Vision, Mission and Goals statements.  These represent the highest outcomes of the organization and managers work to develop a community of excellence that contribute to those outcomes.  Since Excellence is an outcome:  it is not something that is ever fully achieved.  You do not get to a place where you can say; "we have reached excellence, what's next!".  An Excellence Agenda is an ongoing journey and each agenda is unique to each organization.   
4. Every Excellence Agenda has two sub-agendas:  the Sustaining Agenda and the Change Agenda.  The Sustaining Agenda refers to the "meat and potatoes" of what a community does.  These are the day to day activities and outputs that contribute to the outcomes.  This is also known as "the work" that gets done.  The Sustaining Agenda is guided by the Mission of the organization.  The Change Agenda refers to the activities and outputs that will enhance An Excellence Agenda and take the organization to a higher level of excellence.  The Excellence Agenda is guided by the Vision.  The Change Agenda is typically a series of projects that could be related to infrastructure, building new knowledge, research and development, new product launches, new marketing initiatives etc.  The Change Agenda will eventually become the Sustainability Agenda as the Change gets embedded into every day operations.  (Thanks to John Harrison and BMB Consulting for the concept of Sustaining and Change Agendas)
5. So how do you know if your Excellence Agenda is working?  For that you need a Performance Measurement Framework (PMF).  The PMF is a tool that allows you to identify Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) that give you feedback on your progress in contributing to the outcomes, including Excellence, the organization desires.  There can be KPI's for both the Sustaining and the Change Agendas.  In working with PMF's and KPI's for a number of years, the key lessons learned are: what gets measured gets done, gets alignment and gets funded.  An Excellence Agenda without a PMF is only marketing.  An Excellence Agenda with an active PMF is an unstoppable force to be reckoned with. 
6. But we are not Excellent everywhere or consistently.  We need to be able to manage an Excellence Agenda. Managing an Excellence Agenda means managing the Gaps.  The Gaps are the areas where reality and expectations do not meet.  One of the paradoxes of managing an Excellence Agenda, is that we will always have Excellence gaps.  It is part of the journey.  As discussed above, we never actually achieve Excellence - we contribute to it.  We will discuss managing gaps in greater detail in a future posting.  
7. The role of Executives and Managers is to create environments in which an Excellence Agenda can be delivered.  This includes financial excellence, product or service excellence, customer excellence etc.  An Excellence Agenda has multiple facets and dimensions.  An Excellence Agenda can include outcomes of profitability, environmental sustainability, service standards, the development of social, cultural or intellectual capital.  In short, an Excellence Agenda can be as broad or as narrow as you require.  What an Excellence Agenda does is focus attention on what is important - what the key success factors are to contribute to the aspirations of the organization.

Stay tuned, there is more to come on all of these ideas.

Megan's Story

On Friday of last week, I needed to get a few grocery items and stopped in at our local Metro supermarket.  This supermarket is a typical suburban food store.  This is not a superstore or big box, but a standard food market with a great deli, in-house bakery and a great selection of produce.  It serves a local community of about 45,000 people in a community that is typically a blue collar type of crowd.

I checked out with my debit card and asked for some cash back.  I left the store and about a half hour later when looking to complete another purchase discovered I had no cash.

When I got home, I looked at the receipt from the Metro store.  I had not signed for any cash back - so probably the cashier and I had both missed it.  (An over 50 moment for me!)  I called the telephone number on the receipt and within two rings I heard;  "Hello Metro, Meagan speaking."  Wow, a real person answers the telephone without going through a prompt system.  I explained the situation and Megan said, no problem that when the reconciliation was done in the evening they could give me a call back.  I thought that would be ok, and then said I had the time and the transaction code on the receipt.  "Oh," said Megan, " I can look that up on our computer, just a moment."  In literally a few seconds, she had identified my purchase and told me what I had bought.  "The cashier is right beside me," she said, " if you don't mind waiting a few moments we can do a quick cash check."  In less than a minute she was back on the line with the news that the cash was over by exactly the amount I had requested.  We arranged for me to pick up the money the next morning.

Early Saturday morning I went in to get my money and met Megan face to face.  I was so impressed with the service - I wanted to know the source of the Excellence Agenda.  I wanted to know what had triggered her response to help me.  She said it was when I told her that I had not signed for the money and could give her the time and transaction code that she realized I was telling her the truth.  From that it was just a question of checking the computer.  But it was much more than that.

There are not one, but two Excellence Agendas here. It seems, this Metro store has an Excellence Agenda based on competing not just on prices and product selection, but also on exceptional and personal customer service.

Megan has her own Excellence Agenda.  Megan is in her mid-20`s and has worked at the store for more than 10 years - it`s the only job she has had.  She has a degree in Psychology and has an honest interest in making people happy.  She gets her people approach from her parents and upbringing and it is supported by the `family atmosphere`of the staff.  This store has a staff of over 100 - some family!

The fact that Megan has worked in the store for 10 years and really enjoys her job, tells me that she is not only working in a Community of Excellence, but that management has created a Culture of Excellence.

Megan explained that the computer used to be on the second floor and when there were customer enquires at the customer service station, someone would have to go upstairs.  So what did management do?  They installed a terminal beside the telephone so that she can look up information while she is on the telephone.   In other words, the corporate Excellence Agenda is supported by IM/IT systems that give the staff the ability to respond to enquiries in real time.  Megan is also given the freedom to make customer satisfaction decisions without having to go to senior management all of the time.  There is a belief that the customer is, for the most part, honest and trustful.  That creates a culture of trust within the store to serve with authenticity and credibility.

Congratulations to the Management and Staff of Metro store 257.  You are a wonderful example of An Excellence Agenda and the power of Communities of Excellence.

By the way, after talking with Megan, I went in to buy BBQ supplies and spent virtually all of the cash back.  An Agenda of Excellence pays rewards.

Communities of Excellence

One of the foundations of promoting an Excellence Agenda is recognizing the need to foster Communities of Excellence.  I will define Communities of Excellence in greater detail in later postings to the blog - but let me give you an example of a Community of Excellence in action.

Last weekend was the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.  As the airways over North America closed, transatlantic flights were redirected to smaller centres on the East Coast of Canada.   I was pleased to hear interviews with the Mayor of Gander, Newfoundland on how their community of 10,000 responded to the 6600 guests they had sent to them. Given only a few hours notice, the Mayor appealed to the community for help, everything was needed; bed clothes and linens, food for the emergency shelters, volunteers to help greet and register the guests, set up for telephones and email.  It was a monumental task, but this community came together and made it happen.  They even hosted a good-bye party for the guests before they left.

In interviews with some of the guests, who returned for the 10th anniversary gathering, they talked about the hospitality, the warmth and generosity.  They talked of making lifelong friendships.  Gander is now twinned with other communities because of what they did that day.  The Mayor talked about how important it was to make sure that the right people were put in the right volunteer places to make sure that it all worked. Everyone pitched in with their unique abilities and their own contribution to creating a Community of Excellence.

I lived through the Ice Storm of January 2008.  From that experience, I learned how resilient and adaptable communities really are.  How communities can actively learn from each other, share information and ensure that everyone gets taken care of.  In my work in community consultation and engagement, I have always marvelled at the level of talent, creativity and innovation there exists wherever I go.  The same goes for the organizations and businesses I have worked with.  People want to be associated with a Community of Excellence.  The challenge for leaders at all levels is to help create environments in which people feel that they are a part of a Community of Excellence.

Today, look at the communities that you belong to.  Which ones do you feel a sense of excellence and connection to?  Why is that, and what have you done to contribute to the sense of excellence?

Excellence is all around us - we just need to stop for a moment and see it for what it really is.

Welcome

Welcome to the An Excellence Agenda Blog.  This space will be used to focus on specific issues around excellence, performance measurement, creativity and innovation.  We will also review how to apply An Excellence Agenda in different kinds of organizations.  

So what is an Excellence Agenda?   Every organization, community or individual I have ever worked with, wants to be excellent.  I have never worked with any community or organization that wanted to be "unexcellent"! Individuals, organizations and communities are not excellent at everything, but every situation wants to demonstrate that what they do, matters.  An Excellent Agenda is a process that provides a process that contributes to Excellence. We do this with two primary tools; performance measurement and Communities of Excellence.

From my work in performance measurement, excellence is an outcome.  You never fully achieve excellence, you can only contribute to it.  An Excellence Agenda is an approach to management and organizational development/design that aims to liberate the latent excellence and unique abilities of all of the staff, and stakeholders to meet community, organizational or individual outcomes.

An Excellence Agenda, is a commitment to provide an environment in which excellence can occur.  That is the primary purpose of management.  If Managers and Executives focus on creating environments in which excellence can occur - staff and stakeholders will overcome massive obstacles to deliver to the mandate of the organization.  To accomplish that requires an performance measurement process that allows you to track where you are and where you are headed in the excellence agenda.

The benefits are numerous.  An community or organization that has an active Excellence Agenda will see:

• greater satisfaction and engagement from participants
• higher levels of innovation and creativity
• a positive ROI for the effort expended on the Excellence Agenda (Excellence is Free!)
• higher levels of sustainability; financially, environmentally and on any other dimension you can think of

In future posts we will outline some of the steps required to build and maintain an Excellence Agenda and in particular, discuss Communities of Excellence. 

Cheers

Francis