The Key to Wealth and Success Is Excellence
What is excellence and how do you achieve it?
As it happens that you worked really hard at something, and felt that you are on the verge of great success, only to have pretty much nothing come from it? Do you feel that there is an invisible wall blocking every project you undertake from succeeding? Well, they're very well may be, and here is the only true way to smash through that wall to success.
It is excellence. Most people who underachieve are very devoted to success. They want it very much, and put in lots of time to achieve it. What they are missing, however, is this one true ingredient of success.
What is excellence, and why does it creates success?
Excellence comes from the word excel. To excel means to go beyond the standard. It means to be unique, to be better than other similar people or things. It can also mean to go beyond people's expectations. "It was an excellent show," which means it was better than the average quality we expect. It means to be special.
Average and ordinary, while they may be completely functional and practical, do not create any excitement. When you think of going out to eat, McDonald's does not have any particular thrill about it. Their food is average and ordinary, and creates no excitement. True, they are as successful of business as ever there was, because their excellence is in their creation of a dirt cheap way to eat (not the healthiest of) food.
But tell someone they are going to a special French restaurant, a place known for their excellent menu, and then they will get excited. This is special, this is unique. When excellence creates excitement, you have a magic formula for success.
The foundation of excellence.
Excellence is created on a solid foundation of quality. You can't excel if you aren't at least as good as the rest. You can't build a great skyscraper on a foundation of sand. It has to be solid quality that is the basis of your excellence.
How do you define quality? I saw a great definition in a book on advertising: Quality is the absence of nonquality signals. What does this mean?
It means that if you run a motel, and the paint is peeling in one corner of the rooms, you have not achieved quality. No matter how good everything else is, that clear sign of lack of quality dirties the whole reputation. In whatever you do, put most of your effort into building a solid foundation of quality. Wall to wall quality.
Proof from a personal experience.
I am a musical theater performer and producer. I recently produced a concert of Broadway show tunes. On two successive nights, we performed in two different cities, with completely different results. On the first night, the sound technician had terrible technical problems. The microphones were making distorted noises, and the lighting system was not completely working. As a result, the audience generally did not like the performance. Their criticism went beyond the technicals to the very performances themselves. They didn't like the songs, they didn't appreciate the singers. It was not a quality evening, and the entire package suffered.
The next night, I personally made sure that the sound guy got it right. As a result, the lighting and sound were perfect. We did exactly the same performance, yet this time the technicals were high quality. I can't begin to tell you how many raves we got from the audience about that performance. Fortunately, the newspaper reviewer came to the second night's performance!
Now it was exactly the same concert, with the same singers in the same songs. The only difference was, the first night was filled with nonquality signals. Screeching speakers, microphones that weren't always heard, and lighting that was one color were nonquality signals. Because of that, even the songs and singers were not appreciated. The next night, when the quality was wall-to-wall solid, the singers and the songs got huge ovations.
Bringing it to excellence.
Once you've got your solid quality, then you ask yourself how you can make excellence happen. You can be excellent by being better than the rest. You can be excellent by being an innovator! You may not have the resources to provide the same amount of service as a large corporation. But you may be able to give personal attention that they can't. Therein lies your excellence.
So commit yourself to quality. Then, find your own personal excellence. Commit to it, don't declare a project completed until you have achieved it. It has to be something that will create excitement, for excitement is the greatest motivator. Be excellent, get people excited, and you will succeed in achieving wealth and success in all that you do.