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Excellence: Are you just going through motions?

  • Published
  • By Pam Cypher
  • 90th Mission Support Group
Excellence. It's a hard concept to fathom. How would you define excellence? Is it in the old Army motto, "Be all you can be?" Or is it just an utterance as the lead character in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" so eloquently stated, "Excellent, dude!"

Excellence is easy to overlook. We are in the era of "do more with less" and "get it done as soon as possible." We give most of our business to the company who provides us with the best value, not necessarily the company best suited for the job.

Face it - we've become a society of "settlers." We settle for less than excellent. And it's time to stop, because we deserve better, our families deserve better and this country certainly deserves better.

We are all capable of excellence. It is manifested in the virtues of character, including courage, honesty and pride. To reach a level of excellence in our jobs, we need to take an active role in the team. People will support that which they help to create. We must set standards and hold to them; don't conform and don't settle. Once the standards have been set, we have an obligation to explain them to others on our team and reinforce our commitment to those standards. We need to track and measure our progress.

Setting our sights on excellence is not just looking down to solve the problem below you. We need to look up one level and solve problems before they become an issue. By doing this, we shape the playing field into a mold we can conform into excellence. Don't rush to failure, but hesitation results in the situation shaping you, not the other way around.

Next time you're rushing to complete a task, ask yourself, "Am I just going through the motions or is this a product I would be proud to put my name on?" When you turn a project in, it should be nothing short of excellent. We're all capable of it. When you can honestly take pride in what you do, that's "excellent dude!"