The better you perform, the more invisible you become.
The famous physicist, Albert Einstein, reportedly once said, “Try not to become a man of success, but rather a man of value.” It’s great advice, and we’ve met thousands of people struggling to follow it – to become people of value. Yet, as these people strive for excellence, their efforts are increasingly taken for granted and their contribution – their excellent performance – is often devalued. You may feel the same way.
Organizations are also frequently undervalued. Over the last 20 years, many organizations have implemented continuous improvement and customer intimacy initiatives in a quest for sustained market leadership – to become organizations of lasting value. However, during the same time, customer loyalty has plunged to all-time lows and shareholder value has become more volatile than at any other time in history. Companies who have successfully implemented these improvement initiatives are not getting the expected value from them, but instead become more invisible because of them. It’s a paradox, what we call the Paradox of Excellence™.
This concept reveals that the better you do your job, the more your performance becomes invisible. Improved performance does not necessarily translate into higher perceived value. In fact, it is more likely to merely shift the customer’s view of commodity performance upward, causing the customer to take that new, improved performance for granted. Vendors that perform extraordinarily well set a customer expectation for themselves that is often difficult to sustain.
The first part of The Paradox of Excellence is a management parable that illustrates this paradox, its symptoms and causes, and provides you with a clear way to overcome it. The story highlights what happens when a vendor allows a single negative situation to characterize and define an entire relationship between itself and its customer – when the customer’s expectations aren’t managed. In our consulting careers, we’ve seen this quite often.
We have tried to create an entertaining story with characters you can relate to, ideas you can use, and practical frameworks to help you achieve the long-term success you desire. While the characters and organizations are all fictitious, they represent composites of real people in real organizations with whom we’ve worked. Just like all of us, they exhibit courage and fear, strength and weakness, humility and arrogance, altruism and greed – all in varying degrees. They laugh, panic, cheer, stumble, delight, sink, and fly with hope! And just like them, we have daily opportunities to find ways to prevail over the hidden obstacles we all face.
The second part of the book contains three sections: The Concept, an overview of the Paradox of Excellence including the symptoms, root cause and remedy; The Assessment, a twenty question self-assessment you can use to determine your vulnerability to the Paradox of Excellence; and The Roadmap for Success, a series of steps you can follow to quickly and easily overcome the Paradox of Excellence.
We know you’re busy, so we wrote this book to be read in one or two sittings. We’ve chosen the parable format because, frankly, it works. Stories are better remembered than formulas. Plus, they’re far more fun to read (and to write)! We encourage you to read The Paradox of Excellence with an open heart and an open mind and hope this book will entertain you and set you on your own path to developing sustained value in all areas of your life.
It was 9:20 a.m. Monday morning and Tom Fredericks was already having a very bad day. He was only weeks into his new job as Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Premiere Specialty Trucking, Inc., a mid-sized logistics company servicing California’s Silicon Valley, and things were crumbling. Tom reread the ‘Termination of Services’ email from MacroZip Electronics, Premiere’s largest and most prestigious customer. He couldn’t imagine what had happened.
“Ryan, get in here!” Tom yelled to the account rep handling MacroZip, who was sitting in the sales bullpen outside his door.
Ryan Walters grabbed some paper and hustled into Tom’s office. This was the first time Ryan had heard Fredericks raise his voice. “What’s up, boss?”
“This.” Tom handed the email over to Ryan.
Ryan’s face paled as he read the word TERMINATION in the curtly written email from Gary Howard, Vice President of Logistics for MacroZip Electronics. “They’re firing us? This is unbelievable! I’ve worked with MacroZip for over five years and there’s been no sign that anything was wrong.”
“Well, I think it’s fair to say we now have a pretty good sign something’s horribly wrong! Go find out what the heck’s going on and get me a meeting with Gary Howard while I go get chewed out by Peters.” Tom was referring to his boss, Hank Peters, the tough-minded, no-nonsense founder and CEO of Premiere Trucking.
Hank Peters sat on the edge of his gray metal desk with a phone to his ear, barking instructions to a dispatcher. The 60-year-old retired Marine Master Sergeant was a force of nature. His military record had shown him to be gifted at sorting out and arranging the complex puzzle pieces of logistics, politics, and positioning to ensure the survival of his troops. In the 20 years since retiring from the Corps, he had built one of the best run shipping companies in the country and clearly the best in his local market. In both careers he lived by the motto: ‘Excellence Delivers Victory!’
“Hold on,” Peters said, cupping his phone. “What?” he growled, as Fredericks’ head popped through the door. One didn’t barge in on Hank Peters. He preferred structure, organization and discipline. If you wanted to see him, you’d better have an appointment.
“Mr. Peters, sorry to interrupt, we have a crisis and I need to talk to you,” Tom replied.
“Can it wait?”
“No sir. I don’t think it can.”
“Okay. Stan, I’ll have to call you back.” Peters hung up the phone. “Now, what’s so important that it can’t wait until our 11 a.m. management meeting?”
“This,” Tom said, swallowing hard and handing the email to Peters.
Peters put on his reading glasses and quickly scanned the email. “Tom,” he said sternly, looking above his glasses, “MacroZip Electronics has been my client for over a dozen years. I personally sold and managed them. You haven’t even been here a month. Explain to me how you managed to lose our largest customer!”
“Mr. Peters, I don’t know what prompted this email. It just came in. I’ve asked Ryan, who handles MacroZip, to provide me with some answers. I’ll try to get you an explanation by our 11 a.m. meeting, but I wanted you to know about this as soon as possible,” Tom replied.
”Trying won’t cut it. I want answers. Get it done!” Peters shouted, picking up the phone and directed Tom out of his office with a wave of his hand.
“Ryan,” Tom called when he returned to his office. “What’s the situation with MacroZip?”
“I called their warehouse manager. He told me we messed up MacroZip’s shipment to Single, the hot-selling mobile gaming device company, which was due on Friday. The shipment didn’t show up until this morning,” Ryan said, shuffling into Tom’s office.
“Why? What the hell happened?”
“I don’t know exactly. I’m trying to find out. I can’t find the dispatcher in charge, so I haven’t tracked down who handled the shipment yet.”
“Well, stay on it,” Tom said. “What else did the warehouse manager say?”
“The guys at MacroZip are really ticked off. They trusted us. MacroZip was already in trouble with Single. Apparently, another trucking company had frequently delivered late to Single. To fix that problem, MacroZip moved the bulk of their local trucking business to us. Until this weekend, we’d eliminated the late delivery problem. But because we hadn’t delivered the parts until this morning, Single had to shut down their factory on Sunday. It was the ‘final straw’ for Single. They notified MacroZip of their intent to find another supplier of electronic parts, and MacroZip is blaming us for everything. From MacroZip’s perspective, we blew it when they had needed us to come through the most. They feel like we lied to them – like we misled them – now they don’t know why they ever trusted us.”
“Did we mislead them?”
“No…not intentionally…” Ryan stammered, trying to find the right words. “Quality is our differentiator – how we distinguish ourselves from the competition. It’s how we won all that business at MacroZip in the first place. Our mantra has always been, ‘Excellence Delivers Victory!’ You know – Hank’s thing. It’s right there on your wall.” Ryan pointed to the motivational picture hanging behind Tom’s chair with these very words. “Everything we communicate to our customers drives home that point. So, did we mislead them? No. Our performance has been great – at least up ’til now. Going forward, though, we may have to mislead people.”
“Why?”
“How am I supposed to talk with our customers given what’s happened? If ‘Excellence Delivers Victory’, what do screw-ups deliver?”
“I hear ya,” Tom winced, and then quickly turned serious. “But Ryan, we need to fix this situation right now. Your job is on the line and so is mine. When am I scheduled to meet with Gary Howard?”
“I’ve set up a call between you and Gary at 2 p.m. today. He’s stuck in a meeting until then.”
“Fine. In the meantime, go buy the MacroZip warehouse manager some lunch. Try mending the fence as best you can.”
“Consider it done,” Ryan said, as he walked out of Tom’s office.