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EXCELLENCEthe

IN AN EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT FROM HIS NEW BOOK EXCELLENCE EVERY DAY,INDUSTRY THOUGHT LEADERLIOR ARUSSY EXAMINES THE TRUTH—AND CRIPPLING FICTIONS—BEHIND THE VALUE OF EXPERIENCE

h ave you been to the business aisleof the bookstore recently? Judg-ing by the mountain of books on

excellence, we should have produced astampede of excellence by now. It’s clearthat we are nowhere close. Excellence isnot a permanent, integral part of ourlives. The question is, why not?

Understanding excellence and how todeliver it is at the heart of the matter. Wehave been captivated by misconceptionsand faulty logic that is encapsulated inwhat I call “The Excellence Myth.” Themyth presents a paradox: It is preciselythe traditional definition of excellencethat stops us from achieving our capac-ity for excellence. Instead of inspiring usto reach our full potential, The Excel-lence Myth debilitates us, permitting usto accept something less.

Management, for example, consistentlydiminishes employees’ capacity for excel-lence. Willing and motivated employeesare often squashed by a top-down insis-tence on procedures being followed. Thistype of bureaucracy sends a clear mes-sage to employees: Follow and obeyrather than initiate and excel. Employees,as a result, are defaulting to playing theobedient soldier while surrendering anyinitiative or innovation. They do whatthey are told and try not to think toomuch. After years of this, how canemployees even consider the pursuit ofexcellence? They just want to survive.

DEFINING EXCELLENCEBut what does excellence look like?According to my dictionary, excellenceis “the state, quality, or condition of

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excelling; superiority.” I especially likethe word “superiority,” which clearlyindicates that “consistency” and “parity”are not excellence.

I define excellence as the ability toexceed expectations. In terms of CRM,excellence is simply the ability to surprisecustomers. It is the art of going beyondthe expectations of your customers,your managers, and even yourself.When you go beyond expectations, youcreate something unique for your recip-ient. You add a personal touch and takeresponsibility. You contribute from thereservoir of your humanity. You surpriseyour customers (and sometimes your-self) with the creation of the new.

EXCELLENCE OR NOTHINGCompetition has presented us with asimple challenge: excellence or nothing.We live in times where “good enough”simply doesn’t cut it anymore. Newcompetitors have demonstrated anambitious spirit and a drive to suc-ceed. While some may not yet havereached a genuine level of excellence,it’s clear that the pursuit of excellenceis a main focus. Why are we losingground to others? Are we really will-ing and ready to compete? Are we pur-suing excellence with everything wehave? Do we have a fully committedorganization, with employees who arededicated to delivering excellence—andto winning the customer’s heart in theprocess? Do our employees have thefreedom to get around controlling proc-esses and to make the types of personalchoices that will let us rise to the chal-lenge of excellence?

Sadly, the answer to these questions is“No.”With a culture of ineptitude devel-oping among us, created by top-downmanagement and reflected throughcountless “Dilbert” cartoons, episodes ofThe Office, derisive jokes, and books thattell us to “stop working so hard,” we aremethodically stripping away our abilityto win. As competition has intensified,so has our addiction to cynical contentthat places us on the fast track to dimin-ished expectations and competitiveness.

To drive excellence, your organizationneeds willing employees who have beengiven permission to perform. Excellencecannot be mandated from above; it risesfrom the bottom up. Your employeesneed to want to deliver excellence.Meanwhile, managers need to create anenvironment in which delivering excel-lence is not the exception to the rule orsomething in the domain of the “suck-ers.” Enabling excellence will require youto give employees permission to per-form. You’ll need to provide them withsound information for decision-making,and empower them by granting author-ity and the freedom to make mistakes.

Your commitment to excellence mustbe absolute because it is a matter of dif-ferentiation and growth. It is a matter ofmaking you and your organization

indispensable. To stay competitive, youcan no longer afford random acts ofexcellence conducted by a few individu-als who are the exception to the rule. Youneed excellence to happen every day, byevery employee.

Excellence through processes is a famil-iar goal, thanks to the Six Sigma formulathat drives consistency through optimi-zation. Excellence through people is still arare virtue, commanding attention andpremium. But by working with yourpeople as the prime differentiators of thebusiness, excellence will become the wayto unleash the power of their innova-tion, caring, and commitment. It is onlythrough their own choice that they willdeliver their best.

EVERYONE LISTENS TO CUSTOMERSThere is nothing more powerful than lis-tening to your customers. A simple mes-

sage delivered in the voice of the cus-tomer can be more insightful thanhundreds of pie charts and Excel spread-sheets.“Listening to customers” is a cor-porate mantra every executive loves totout, but when executives are asked tojoin customer discussions at the contactcenter, they often decline, citing timeconstraints. (Executives always seem tohave higher priorities than listening tothose who pay the bills.) Even whenexecutives do finally go meet customers,the agenda is predetermined—and thereal voice of the customer is never heard.

At one Fortune 500 corporation, how-ever, the vice president of customer ser-vice had an idea: If the executives wouldnot come to the customers, he wouldbring the customers to the executives. Hestarted to record customer interactions athis contact centers. The CDs he createdwith selected calls—titled “Our Great-est Hits”—were then distributed toexecutives. “It was painful to listen tothose calls,” one of the executives said,“but it opened my eyes to the way cus-tomers think and speak about us.”

The CDs became a regular part of thecorporation’s executive agenda. Everyfew weeks, a new CD was produced withfresh customer comments. Thanks to

this simple idea, executives began to shapetheir decisions to fit customer needs. Peo-ple got used to incorporating The Cus-tomer into their daily thinking anddecisions by listening to live customers.

Getting every employee exposed tothe voice of the customer helps compa-nies to be fully tuned to the customer’sway of thinking. Going beyond graphsand spreadsheets, employees get to hearreal customers who express real feelingsand emotions. It can be a painful expe-rience, but it can also be the best wake-up call. (Alternatively, it can be thrillingto hear customers describe how theyenjoy your product and provide someinsight for new, innovative ideas.)

To deliver excellence that is based onthe recipient, you need to know yourcustomers better than they know them-selves. You need to be well versed in yourcustomers’ lifestyles, challenges, aspira-

THE EXCELLENCE MYTH

IN TERMS OF CRM,EXCELLENCE ISSIMPLY THE ABILITYTO SURPRISECUSTOMERS.

tions, and fears to best design and deliverthat excellence they are striving for, theexcellence that will truly solve theirproblems. It’s all there in the unproc-essed, real voice of the customer, ex-pressed in the most human way.

THE CHAINSAW ROCK STARSmashing guitars has been a fixture ofthe music industry for decades. ButHenry Juskiewicz gave the old traditiona new twist. When Juskiewicz acquiredGibson Guitar in 1985, he faced a com-pany with a great heritage near collapse.In a recent interview with USA Today,Juskiewicz disclosed one of the steps hetook to turn around the flagging com-pany. “Seconds”—guitars with someblemishes or subtle problems—werecommon in the industry and were soldas “good enough” guitars. To reinforcethe concept of product excellence, Jus-kiewicz took a “second,” and, in the pres-ence of employees, he smashed it. Hedeclared that, as of that moment, anyguitar that did not meet the standard ofa first-class Gibson would not be sold tocustomers. Juskiewicz would rather seethese guitars destroyed than in the handsof customers. To emphasize his philoso-phy, he instructed employees to smasheach faulty guitar and pile them in a des-ignated area. At the end of every week,he would lead his employees by using achainsaw to destroy the faulty guitars.

This may sound theatrical and harsh.Finance people would likely argue thatthe company was sacrificing a potentialrevenue stream. They would argue thatdefects in these guitars are rarely notice-able and would not impede a customer’sguitar playing. But Juskiewicz realized adeeper truth: However tempting it maybe to capture additional revenue fromthe sale of faulty or defective products,one cannot sell seconds and deliveramazing customer experiences. Theimpact on brand image and on the cus-tomer experience will ultimately bedevastating.

Juskiewicz’s action sent two criticalmessages. For employees, the message isthat Gibson Guitar is a “no-excuses”

experience and that anything less thanperfection will not be tolerated. Anycompromise in quality leads to an over-all compromise in excellence. Productsuperiority is a competitive and strategicadvantage and selling faulty guitars,however minute those faults may be,erodes that advantage. Furthermore, tol-erating seconds will lead employees toaccept less than the highest standards.Production standards will ultimatelydecline, and the customer experiencewill be diminished. A subsequent reduc-tion in profits and a decline in customerloyalty will soon follow.

The message to customers centered onthe company’s high product standards.

By witnessing product excellence eachtime customers bought or played aguitar, they would know that GibsonGuitar provides only the very best. Cus-tomer expectations would be exceeded,and their experiences would be delight-ful. By destroying faulty guitars, Jus-kiewicz was destroying any attitude oftaking customers for granted.

Destroying guitars and sacrificingrevenue from flawed products may becostly in the short term, but any organ-ization committed to excellence musttake such measures. The alternative—mediocrity—is worse. Organizationsthat seek true long-term loyalty fromcustomers must deliver that same level

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The Excellence Aptitude TestRank each comment on a 1–5 scale where 1 = “Strongly Disagree” and 5 = “Strongly Agree”

c My workplace strategy is competitive and successful.

c My boss is a competent and a respected leader.

c I work with people who support my pursuit of excellence.

c I live up to my excellence potential.

c I get many compliments for the quality of my work.

c I can see the results of my work.

c My work impacts others in a significant way.

c I am fully responsible for the results of my work.

c My work is personal and not just business.

c I have the tools and authority to do my job.

c In my organization, technology is secondary to people.

c I always strive to do more for customers.

c Decisions are not controlled by senior management.

c I always do what is right for the customer.

c My values and the organization’s values are fully aligned.

c I am excited by the results of my work.

c Everyone can be as great as the top achievers of our century.

c I can recognize excellence in my daily work.

c Excellence is not a once-in-a-lifetime achievement.

c I will take risks to do the right thing.

c TOTAL OF THE ABOVE

Scoring:20–49: You are a captive of The Excellence Myth, clinging to all the possible excuses for why youcannot deliver excellence. You believe that your destiny, and therefore your performance, iscontrolled by outside forces that stop you from living up to your excellence potential. 50–79: You try to deliver excellence, but somehow fail to do so. The good news is that you see yourpotential. The bad news is that your excellence performance is misguided. You need to rethinkyour definition of excellence and re-evaluate the severity of some of the perceived obstacles. 80–100: You refuse to take no for an answer. Despite the challenges, you see the potential of yourefforts and strive to perform in a superior manner. You are proud of the impact you have on othersand draw personal fulfillment and satisfaction from delivering excellence. You are on the rightpath. Continue to raise the bar and reach for new heights of excellence.

THE EXCELLENCE MYTH

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of commitment. Organizations areeither committed to excellence and thecontinued improvement of product andservice standards, or they are not. Prod-uct and service excellence are more thanjust buzzwords or nice ideas; they serveas a competitive differentiator andstrategic advantage.

Product and service excellence canalso serve as a means to obtain a higherprice for products and services. At Gib-son, prices had been declining 20 per-cent a year and to the astonishment ofemployees, Juskiewicz not only raisedprices, in some cases, he doubled them.Yet even with a dramatic increase inprice, volume continued to increase. Byoffering an exceptional, uncompromisedproduct that delighted customers, Gib-son was able to raise prices significantlyand have customers reaffirm their convic-tion in the value delivered by its premiumprice products. Ultimately, customers re-warded excellence.

Juskiewicz says that the chainsawprocess continues to this day, but hepoints out that the pile of broken guitarsis much smaller. By sending the messagethat only perfection would be accepted,he has not only raised the quality of hiscompany’s guitars, but the productionand service standards of his employees.After all, no employee wants to see theresults of his laborious efforts beingdestroyed by a chainsaw.

Do you allow mediocrity into yourorganization while touting the messageof excellence? As a rule of thumb, if youare willing to sell mediocrity to yourcustomers, do not expect excellencefrom your employees. In a place where“good enough” is accepted, employeeswill not strive for excellence. As with allcommitments, if dedication does not goup, it naturally goes down. This is acompromise that no company canafford to make.

ONLY YOUR CUSTOMERS CAN JUDGE YOUR EXCELLENCENever miss an opportunity for excel-lence, which is measured one customerat a time. The challenge posed by any

given customer problem is really anopportunity: a chance to convey yourexcellence. When you engage with yourcustomer, do you address the biggerpicture or just your narrow definitionof customer needs? This is exactly whyexcellence should be defined as judgedby the recipient. Often, we claim excel-lence, but by our own terms. Thoseterms are often narrow and easy toachieve, and may ignore the big pictureor our customers’ larger concerns. It is acommon mistake when excellence isself-centric and not customer-centric.

Redefining and reframing excellenceas an everyday occurrence—rather thana rare lifetime achievement—is impor-tant to shifting away from The Excel-

lence Myth. Excellence belongs to every-one who wants to deliver it. That meansit is you who chooses to unleash yourpower for excellence. Your employees arecapable of excellence, but they may sim-ply choose not to deliver it in yourorganization in every act. They will taketheir excellence elsewhere.

The only question left unanswered is,Are you ready to believe in your owncapacity for excellence?

Lior Arussy is the founder and presidentof Strativity Group, a consultancy.

This article is adapted from his mostrecent book, Excellence Every Day

(Information Today, Inc.). He can bereached at lior@strativity.com.

The Experience Gap AnalysisTo identify the differences between employee and customer definitions of excellence, I designed the Experience Gap Analysis (EGA) study. The EGA study surveyed seven companies in the U.S. and Europe and allowed us to analyze 23,088 responses from 18,261 customers and4,827 employees who served them. (The customers and employees participating in the studyrepresented a variety of sectors including B2B products, business services, and B2C products.)The survey asked customers and employees to rate the employees’ performance during a singleperformance interaction: the employees from their perspective as the deliverers of theperformance and the customers from their perspective as the recipients.

The EGA study measured the customer experience on the following four dimensions:

Capabilities: The extent to which the employee possesses the necessary tools and authority todeliver performance excellence (e.g., access to customer information)

Knowledge: The extent to which the employee understands the customer’s business, lifestyle,challenges, and aspirations

Willingness: The extent to which the employee is motivated to deliver performance excellence(e.g., to go above and beyond the call of duty)

Attitude: The extent to which the employee’s connection with the customer is affected by hispersonal communication style (e.g., arrogance, sense of privilege to serve)

Each of these four dimensions was addressed through several questions relating to the waycustomers and employees interact and the outcome of that interaction. Questions were measuredbased on strong conviction responses rather than on median response.

THE GAPS TELL THE STORYEGA survey results revealed a significant disconnect between employee and customer perception,and nowhere was this more evident that in the “willingness” dimension with a 35.8 percent gap. Relative to customer responses overall, employees consistently overestimated their level ofperformance excellence, believing that they had delivered greater value than their counterparts on the receiving end were willing to give them credit for. A pattern in the responses showed thatthe criteria employees used in defining performance excellence generally neglected to take thecustomer’s own criteria into account. Especially surprising were the following statistics:

79 percent of employees said they often go “above and beyond” and exceed customerexpectations, yet only 29 percent of customers agreed. Perception gap: 50 percent.

75 percent of employees said their work makes a difference in their customers’ lives, but only 29 percent of customers agreed. Perception gap: 46 percent.

88 percent of employees said they use common sense and discretion in the way they interact with customers, yet only 40 percent of customers agreed. Perception gap: 48 percent.