Excellence and Expectations
The Happy Burro talks about the Expectation of Excellence. Here is how he says it affects a team:
If your team isn’t used to being accountable for delivering projects on time, on budget and with superior quality, this expectation of excellence will be a big change. Resistance will be shown, or not (think passive/aggressive) and a certain ’soreness’ like a workout, will be felt. Keeping tight to goals and objectives will require your team to either get on the train, or feel left behind. Know that this is their issue, not yours.
I think the biggest challenge to this is maintaining the expectation as the organization grows. As we’ve been able to grow our staff, we’ve had our ups and downs with this. There are times that we have let things slide because of how hard everyone is working, but we have certainly raised the bar on what is expected. Our leadership team recently attended a forum where people were fined for being late back to sessions and staff were pushed to work extremely hard mentally through long days. It was a strange sensation for the people who are usually the hardest workers in the room being the ones stretching their own limits. One of our board members likened it to getting your MBA in 3 days. I wouldn’t go that far, but we were all mentally drained at the end. We were all also completely invigorated. The session helped to remind us of what the standard should be. It takes a lot of mental energy to keep the standards high, but it becomes part of the culture and gets easier over time.
Hi Joe,
You make some great points here. I especially like:
“There are times that we have let things slide because of how hard everyone is working, but we have certainly raised the bar on what is expected.”
The trajectory on this effort is not a straight line up, but more of a stair-step approach. Our mantra is, “the goals don’t change.”
Best,
Joe Raasch
Joe,
Thanks for the comments and good work on your blog.
Hello Joe If you care about the slashing of funds regarding Arts and Education please view then forward this video to others
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q42sg2bJ9Q4
All the best with your creative and positive agenda
Good luck on your Blog.
Mickey Carroll
http://www.motherj.com
Mickey,
Nice job on the video. We are working hard at improving our arts programming. We added a Cultural Arts Program Director 2 years ago, and a music instructor last year. Both have made a huge difference to our culture and our kids. Our dance squad has already won awards and our musicians are performing publicly after less than a year. Next summer, we’ll be adding a drama program. Funding is a challenge, but it has to be done.