Excellence

The commitment to excellence has pervasive affects on our management actions.

• Because excellence is a function of ability, desire, time, etc., an organization can be truly special in only a few activities.  As leaders, we focus the energies of the organization on the ones that are absolutely critical to long-term success.  We have learned this valuable lesson from too many painful experiences. 
• Since focus alone does not guarantee excellence, we engage in other organizational activities to increase the likihood of achieving this outcome, including: systematic processes, the support of outside experts and objective measue of performance versus global standards.
• Our actions and attitudes reflect our understanding of human nature.  We expect significant resistance to change within organizations and individuals.  We commit the time and energy to achieve our results.  We don't expect progress to be linear; we expect it to occur in step-function fashion.  We value persistence.  Once a change is made, we monitor the activity closesly because we are aware of the tendency to revert to old practices at the first chance possible.   
• We like to hire individuals who have achieved excellence in some endeavor because so much of what they learn as a result is beneficial to our efforts.