When forced to deal with the Five Costs of Excellence, most people turn to one or more of the Five Failed Strategies of Excellence. And in tough economic times, all the more so. This a mistake.

The five strategies that don’t work, particularly during tough times, are these:

Denial. This is pretty hard to sustain when the numbers are staring you in the face. But it’s amazing how many people try it for a while. Denial says, “Tune out.”

Toughness. In challenging times, this can lead to a willingness simply to endure high costs and lowered rewards, accompanied by some bluster. But is misses opportunies to innovate, create, and change. During the height of a recession, I once saw an EVP deliver a “mental toughness” speech to his group that deperately needed leadership, not nonsense. His team scattered. Toughness says, “Tough it out.”

Resignation. This just accepts tough times and waits it out. Again, it’s a missed opportunity because tough times bring new opportunties, almost by definition. After all, when the pot is stirred, everything moves.Resiggnation sees “no way out.”

Escapism. Tough times are no time for checking out and retreating to private reverie. I have on two separate occasions witnessed CEO’s talk about visionary moves and the greatness of the company at the very moment the company was tanking. This isn’t leadership vision; it’s sharing a waking dream. Remember Ken Lay’s “I’m excited” speech? That’s not leadership. Escapism says, “Drop out.”

Balance. Balance is nothing more than an avoidance technique, and the last deperate act of the truly trapped. Balance is bullshit. It balances little and achieves nothing. Much better to make decisions and take action. Balance is a “cop out.”

 Instead, here are three strategies that work:

- Encourage fearlessness in your people, and invite them to speak their minds.

- Expect that everyone works from their dynamic essence (their core), chasing down what they care about most and do best, and then demand that they align this with the needs of the business.

- Insist that you and your team put an end the the accrued costs incurred in the excellence trap and work to  create a shift to mastery: replace effort with energy, comiitment with intention, acumen with wisdom, etc.

In this way, tough times won’t compound the negative effects of the excellence trap, and you will take the opportunity to shift to mastery. Ultimately, leadership masters don’t really have tough times, they just have opportunities. If you’re trapped in excellence, this will sound like pollyanna. But as you shift mastery, it makes sense, and it makes all the difference. 

Like millions of others, I was shocked and saddened by the sudden and tragic death of NBC News Washington bureau chief and long-time Meet the Press host Tim Russert. As I took in the coverage from his passing to his memorial, and had a chance to listen the comments of his family, friends, and colleagues, it quickly became abundantly clear that Russert had escaped from excellence and achieved mastery, in a big way. Those who knew him were not merely mouthing the appropriate pro forma testiments to his professionalism, character, and success that we’d expect in circumstances like this. This was much more. This was another level. As a way to pay tribute, and to extend his legacy by holding him up as an example of mastery, let’s take a closer look.

First, Russert was clearly excellent. He is given wide credit for his effort, proficiency, expertise, commitment, and acumen, which together  comprise the Five Virtues of Excellence. His work ethic, preperation, knowledge, savviness, determination, standards, and skill are legendary.

But Russert was more. Close associates referred to his uncanny ability to build genuine relationships, to his unflagging good humor, to his inspiring yet demanding leadership, and credited him with those rare human qualities that clearly set the great ones apart. And former GE (NBC parent) CEO Jack Welch said he made sure Russert made more money too.

Russert was a master: he manifested the Five Markers of Mastery (fearlessness, gracefullness, generativeness, effortlessness, and intuitiveness), in spades. And he clearly had shifted to the Five Pillars of Mastery: Energy (the guy never lost his enthusiasm, and loved where he was and what he did; he never seem to tire); Expression (he was his own man, followed his own path, and spoke his mind, with dignity and joy); Perspective (he saw to the issue, beyond the facts, and mantained personal and professional vision); Intention (he used soft power, a feel for the truth, and a sense of mission to stand up to anyone and ask tough but fair questions, and was able to attract the people and resources to perform at his best), and Wisdom (he never lost sight of his task, his responsibility, and as a result got the job he was born for, set the standard by which others shall be judged, and left a professional and personal legacy that will be both inspiring and hard to match). He took great joy in the success of others, and in the needs of his audience, his fellow citizens. He lived and worked from his Dynamic Essence. And he enjoyed enormous and unexpected rewards.

 Tim Russert wasn’t the coolest guy, as it is defined by the tragically hip. He wasn’t edgy, dangerous, or personally glamorous, and this by choice. He didn’t wield power brutally (even though he held great power), chase the spotlight, show off, act puffed up, or take revenge for minor slights. But it would be wrong to think that he was only about humble blocking and tackling, merely excellent, much less merely a fortunate mediocrity. That would be a terrible misreading of his modus operendi, and gladly I’ve heard no one make this mistake. Instead, the combination of ease and outcome, of low cost and high return, that we saw in Tim Russert is evidence of true Leadership Mastery.

The only outstanding question is whether Tim Russert was one of those rare people who was simply born that way. Did he ever spend much time experiencing the high costs of excellence or wasting time with the five failed strategies of excellence? I suspect not. I believe he may have been one of those few who have mastery built-in to their makeup, and whose transition from excellence to mastery is seamless, apparently either hardwired into his very nature or, perhaps, becoming part of his awareness at a very early age.

As a master, in his job, he won’t be replaced, only succeeded. 

God speed, Mr. Russert. Your legacy will include your witness to mastery for all of us.

We’ve heard many definitions of the role of a leader, from maximize shareholder value to groom a successor. We have a definition of Leadership Mastery that we believe will prove revolutionary…

The single most important job of a leader is this: “Discover, release, express, and sustain the Dynamic Essence of your business. This includes yourself, your teams, associates, partners, brands, and markets.” This is the role of the CEO. This is leadership defined, at every level. And you read it first right here.

I could tell countless stories about successful, capable, excellent business leaders who go through their day subtly, quietly, and subconsciously driven by these popular killers of Dynamic Essence:

- Fear: what if things turn out badly?

- Ego: how can I look good?

- The Five Failed Strategies of Excellence: Denial, Toughness, Resignation, Escapism and Balance

- Reliance upon the Virtues of Excellence after having crossed the Falling Point

No successful person wants to admit that fear, ego, etc. play a role in their lives. Isn’t that only for jerks? NO! Fear, ego, the five failed strategies, and over-reliance upon what made us excellent in the first place define the human condition for everybody who has not shifted from excellence to mastery. It is all of us.

The only escape is to discover, release, express, and sustain your Dynamic Essence, and that of your teams, business, partners, brands, and markets. Period.

I’ll say it again. The single most important job of a leader is this: ”Discover, release, express, and sustain the Dynamic Essence of your business. This includes you, your teams, associates, partners, brands, and markets.”

A recent short article in the January, 2008, Special HBR Centennial Issue devoted to Leadership and Strategy is an unwitting example of the Excellence Trap in action. And it gives us a great opportunity to dispel a few myths floating around in the self-limited world of excellence, using the content of the article only as a jumping off point. The article is called Love and Fear and the Modern Boss, by HBS Prof. Scott A. Snook, and can be summarized like this: ever since back before Machiavelli wrote The Prince, leaders have wrestled with the difficult either-or choice of whether it is better to be loved (the soft style) or feared (the hard style). For a long time, fear won. In recent decades, however, there has been an established trend among top thinkers and leaders that favors love rather than fear as a management style. However, the author concludes, the successful leader will know how and when to use each, and will seek stretch assignments that help them develop untapped strengths. End of article.

That’s it? We’re to do both fear and love well, and balance them skillfully? Where does that leave us? Putting aside any of our beliefs about the benefits of either management style, it leaves us with three popular myths to dispel:

Excellence Myth 1: When you confront an either-or choice, you must choose wither A or B.

Leaders trapped in excellence are smart to consider both sides of the classic big choices. Unfortunately, most people, most of the time, look at whatever A and B represent and consider these to be facts, realities, limits, something we must work within and choose between. This isn’t true, and can only be thought to be true by people trapped in excellence and ignorant of mastery. Mastery knows better. Mastery knows that 99% of all either-or’s are false. Just ask everyone from Captain James Kirk to philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (he wrote three big books to make a similar point point. I’m saving you the trouble of reading them). Mastery doesn’t ride roughshod over facts and ignore reality. Rather it transforms reality. Real masters survey the landscape and rewrite the map. Warning: don’t try to do this from a place of ego; it’s not the same thing. The macho leader will be tempted to shout, “Do both!” But that’s a pose and is doomed to fail (and in the case of using soft and hard styles, will get you labeled passive-aggressive, and just for the record, the recipients of passive-aggressive behavior can go a little nuts). It’s not about choosing one or doing both. It’s about making something new.

Excellence Myth 2: When you confront an either-or choice, you must balance A and B.

Nope. Balance is one of the Five Failed Strategies of Excellence, all of which try and fail to overcome the Limits of Excellence and mitigate the Costs of Excellence. (We’ll discuss all of this in detail in later posts. For now, the other failed strategies are Denial, Toughness, Acceptance, and Escapism). Balance is a cop out, or to quote myself in what I hope becomes a classic, “Balance is bullshit.” Balance is an energy-sucking juggling act that compromises everything and achieves nothing. Again, mastery looks beyond A and B, and creates a new reality. It discovers, discerns, and creates what people trapped in excellence fail to see and act upon. And then it leads.

Excellence Myth 3: Leadership is about greater skills and better application.

Hell no! Skills enable action, they don’t take action, and they sure don’t make choices or create possibilities. Skill is a jumping off point, a means, not an end. I know for certain that the last thing on the mind of a master when in the arena, in the game, on the stage, on the battlefield, or in the boardroom, is skill. Failure says, “I have no skill.” Mediocrity says, “I have to improve my skills.” And Excellence says, “My skills are excellent.” But Mastery says, “I can rely on my skills, but if I become conscious of them even for a moment, I am lost.” Instead, Mastery is in flow, mastery is un-self-aware, mastery improvises.

These myths exist in the Excellence Trap, but are nowhere to be found in mastery. Let’s face it, a leader can go far even if he or she stay in excellence; in fact, it’s necessary to pass though excellence; you can’t skip it. Excellence is excellent for a reason. The issue is this: can you have exponentially higher innovation, energy, sustainability, alignment, advantage, and success than you have now, then your competition, over the long haul? Not within excellence, not inside the Excellence Trap.

Oh yes, what about hard and soft management styles? It’s not either-or, and it’s not both-and. It’s funny to remember those job interviews where the interviewer asks the appilicant to navigate an either-or, a tough choice they are likely to confront on the job. The prepared job-seeker, pursuing excellence, proclaims, “Do both! It’s a both-and! In balance!” Impressive. They seem excellent. They get hired. “Great success,” to quote Borat. But later, when they pass the Limits of Excellence and incur the Costs of Excellence, and struggle for marginal advantage and incremental growth, they might then make the leap into mastery and realize that great leaders are neither hard nor soft; that’s the wrong question (hint: either-or’s are usually the wrong question). Masterful leaders focus on their vision, and the vision of others. They engage, inspire, and align. They look for the greatness that drives the great idea, and they create the conditions for it, daily. They do whatever it takes to ensure that the highest number of people will have, with stunning regularity, implementable, sustainable, differentiated business ideas that drive short term success and long term advantage. And for leaders in Mastery, that’s easy. They can’t not do it.