Escape From Excellence

Are we in a recession? Or a merely slowdown? Will it be deep, or shallow? Protracted or brief?

I don’t know, x 4.

But I do know that any leader should be thinking about how to sustain performance, and even how to defy the odds by achieveing greatness, while our employees are distracted either by fear of layoff’s, or wondering how to stay focused after surviving a layoff. The popular strategy for most people, leaders and associates alike, is denial, but as we’ve discussed elsewhere in this blog, denial is one of the Five Failed Strategies of Excellence and doesn’t work.

Usually, people confronting the challenges of a recession fear either losing their jobs, or keeping their jobs! The opportunity for leadership is to help people to understand that they will flourish either way, and to give them both the tools to do it and the confidence to know it. Working toward a culture of mastery can accomplish this.

Try this: Give your people an experience of escaping the excellence trap and tasting mastery. If it can transform fearand distraction into alignment, innovation, passion, productivity, and confidence (and it can), it will be one of the greatest gifts you can give your people, and one of wisest investments you can make in your business. You can start here. If every person is coming from their greatest strenghts and core identity, and by definition with great passion and productivity, bringing this to their work, several positive result follow:

- people will put fear aside and focus on the job at hand

- innovation will increase as ideas flow from sustained full engagement

- produtivity will increase as focus and passion increase, so more can be accomplished with fewer people

- survivors will continue without a hiccup

- laid off staff will stand out in the marketplace as self-possessed winners

- the business will gain (and spread) a reputation as a great employer in good times and bad

Ultimately, the usual troika of fear-denial, time management, and resentment will be replaced by a turbo-charged workforce. Typical management blather about how “this makes us stronger” will be replaced by inspiring leadership and an inspired, focused, and aligned workforce reality that has tasted mastery.

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