Why Excellence?

Excellence is an attribute on which organisations survive. A building block for them to flourish and become even more bigger and prosperous. Their success depends on excellence to a profound extent. Which is why great CEOs like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Henry Ford et al have all harped on the salient features of excellence within their organisation to make them worthy institutions that they are today. Without the pursuit of excellence, these organisations would have died a slow death.

Quantify Excellence

Excellence when defined is a non-parametric quantity and hence, often can be interpreted in incorrect means whereby it gives a false picture of whether it is actually achieved or not. However to set clear targets and understand the scenario, we quantify excellence in the following manner:

Excellence = Efficiency * Effectiveness

i.e. a combination of efficiency and effectiveness together gives rise to excellence. Efficiency essentially being "doing things right" and effectiveness being "doing the right thing". Every organisation in due course needs to figure out the effective approach towards accomplishing something. Doing the right thing is important so that ventures and strides are taken in the right direction. Once the effectiveness is taken care of, organisations should then concentrate on efficiency. This is where many establishments differentiate between one another. It refers to an input-output approach whereby depending on the availability of resources and inputs, management will then give the output, dealing with all kinds of optimisation methods in the process.

Tower Building Exercise - Lessons in Excellence

The tower building exercise as shown here is one of the best ways of exhibiting efficiency, effectiveness and ultimately excellence. The individual prior to performing the task figured out a way to complete the task. for e.g putting the blocks slightly to the top left or top right of the below block and not exactly on top, putting that at angles to the below and not completely on top of it. These are ways of accomplishing a effective way of performing the task. This part helps him to do the task better as probably putting them in a certain manner over the other can enhance the output and provide an effective solution to the same. The second part is exhibited in the manner he performs the task. The rate at which he does it, the height which he reaches all on the basis of certain rules will eventually help him achieve the desired level of efficiency. As discussed above, these two factors together will contribute towards excellence.

In a similar manner, in large organisations, managers are always encouraged to follow the above principles to achieve excellence. In my personal experience, I have seen some of my superiors who have always designed goals and tasks in such a way that they understand what needs to be done and then chalk out a way to do the right thing in order to reach the end goal. This is followed by careful analysis of improving the efficiency of the task, i.e utilising the available resources and in the shortest time and at the least possible cost, make the perfect product. Thus, in this manner, the employees and the process that they follow itself lends to the excellence of the organisation as a whole.