This document discusses the concept of excellence. It provides three key points: 1) Excellence involves doing the right thing even without supervision and choosing a risky path that others may not want to take. 2) To achieve excellence, organizations cannot rely on past successes and must prepare for changes by pursuing continuous improvement. 3) Excellent leaders act with integrity, address problems decisively by removing disruptive influences, and do things others are unwilling to do.

1. Bret L. Simmons, Ph.D.
Big Idea Lecture Series
May 13, 2014
Normal
Excellence

3. www.bretlsimmons.com
http://www.slideshare.net/BretLSimmons
https://www.youtube.com/user/eustress

4. Excellence matters via @drbret #bigideas

7. What is
excellence?

8. “People do the right thing
even when no one is looking over
their shoulder” (Sutton & Rao, 1994)

9. Robert Quinn
Excellence is a form of deviance…You
become excellent because you are
doing things normal people do not
want to do. You become excellent by
choosing a path that is risky and painful,
a path that is not appealing to others.

10. Permission

13. Make Normal More Excellent?

16. Yesterday’s home
runs don’t win today’s
games
Babe Ruth

17. Sigmoid Curve (Charles Handy)
Sigmoid Curve (Charles Handy, 1995)

18. Discipline of The Second
Curve
“..always assume that we are
near the peak of the first curve
and should therefore be starting
to prepare for the second” (p.57)

22. Plumbing before poetry

26. Integrity

31. Bad is stronger than good

33. Get rid of the bad apples
Best leaders and teams act quickly and
decisively to remove destructive
characters when lesser measures fail

35. Excellence is a form of deviance
DO things
others are not
willing to do

36. Questions?