I am indebted to Archana Parikh and to Paul Roth who inspired this
conversation.
Excellence,
newly. This
conversation
isn't
intended
to challenge best sellers like Tom Peters'
brilliantIn Search Of
Excellence.
Neither is it going to
re-create
business and personal
seminars
which have already covered the topic of
excellence
fully and provocatively. Rather it's a new inquiry, my personal
inquiry, a discovery for myself if you will (a
re-discovery, actually) of what
excellence
is - to be more specific, a discovery of what (or who) I'm
being and what's
present
when I'm being
excellent.
This discovery started with a
friend
wondering out loud with me, what
excellence
is ie what it is to be
excellent,
and what it is to do things
excellently.
Everyone's familiar with
excellence.
Everyone's able to recognize
excellence,
being
excellent,
and doing things
excellently.
We all know it when we see it. But if I asked you to tell me what it
is, we're not necessarily able to
say exactly what it is. This particular
conversation
is an attempt to say what
excellence
is ie to articulateexcellence,
newly.
The first thing I did, the first thing I always do in any study of a
word,
was look up the
word
"excellence"
in the
dictionary.
This is what I found:
"Extremely good"? Extremely ... good? That's it? That's
all? I scrolled the page, expecting more, wanting more
substance. There was none.
Nothing
else. Only when
language
is deployed as whitewash, can a definition like this one of
excellence
as the spare, spindly "extremely good", pass. And here's the thing:
without
transformation,
without
accountability,
language
is almost always deployed as whitewash.
I didn't look in another
dictionary.
I only looked in that one. The issue isn't specific to that
dictionary.
It's endemic to alldictionaries.
When
transformation
is absent,
creators
of definitions of
words
can't be expected to fit them to a
transformedcontext.
Listen:
that's not something to be critical of. Being critical of it would be
akin to being critical of someone who
speaks
fluent French on the Champs-Élysées in
Paris, because they can't
converse
fluently in Greek at the Acropolis in Athens. There's
nothing wrong
with anyone fluent in French not
speaking
Greek. They're two different
language
domains. The one doesn't guarantee, imply, or promise the other.
Nonetheless, I'd like to inquire into ie I'd like to discover a
definition of
excellence
for myself which
speaks
to a
transformedcontext.
If I define
excellence
as "extremely good", the whitewash version, it'll probably elicit a
pale "I know what you mean ..." from you.
That's OK
(no kidding!). If I say
excellent
means "extremely good", you do know what I mean - but
saying it that way just doesn't go far enough. Can discovering a new
definition of
excellence
be useful, without unnecessarily challenging the best sellers or
without
re-creating
the seminars? Can it succeed purely in the realm of personal discovery?
... which is to say can it be useful purely as a personal discovery?
If it succeeds as a personal discovery ie if it succeeds as
my discovery, then won't it
create
the possibility of you discovering what
excellence
is for yourself also? Indeed, won't it
create
the possibility of discovery itself? And if so, then don't
we have the possibility of rewriting the
dictionary
entirely so that it and all
language,
speaks
to a
transformedcontext?
Now that would be something, wouldn't it?
Let's get started. When I'm being
excellent,
I'm being extremely good ("... at what I'm doing" and "...
the way I'm being" are both implied). Setting aside being
"good" as being "well-behaved", what else is
present?
It is, I assert, only when you start distinguishing what else is
present
when
excellence
is
present,
that what
excellencereally is, has a chance to come forth, to be known, and to be
re-creatable.
So here's my question: what's else is
present
when
excellence
is
present?
... which is to say what's also
present
when I'm being
excellent?
I propose three qualities are present (there may be others, there may
be more, but without at least these three qualities being
present,
I assert there's simply no chance of
excellenceshowing up).
The first two qualities are being impeccable and being
immaculate. There's no
excellence
without being impeccable and without being immaculate. And there's no
being impeccable and no being immaculate when I'm simply going
through the motions. There's no being impeccable and no being
immaculate when it's
business as usual.
Being impeccable and being immaculate are the un-"going through
the motions". They're the
un-"business as
usual".
Being impeccable and being immaculate can be applied to (which is to
say can be brought to) any activity: making my bed,
washing the dishes, cleaning windows and surfaces ie any menial task.
Look: if you can't be impeccable and immaculate with menial tasks ie if
you can't bring
excellence
to the small stuff ie if you can't be
excellent
in the minor leagues, then you can
simply forget about being
excellent
with the big stuff ie in the majors. I can bring
excellence
(being impeccable and being immaculate) to
swimming.
I can bring
excellence
to any and all
conversations
and communications. I can bring
excellence
to my
writing.
I can bring
excellence
to all my financial dealings (yes, my check book does
balance to the penny).
And then there's the third quality which must be present, without which
there's simply no chance of
excellence
- indeed, without which there's no chance of the possibility of being
impeccable or of the possibility of being immaculate either in the
first place - and this quality is
presence of Self.
When we bring forth
who we are
and put it into the space (into the work space, into the relationship
and communication space, into the business and financial space - to
name but a few), that's the quality which makes
excellence
possible ie it's the quality which makes being impeccable and being
immaculate possible. Simply put, the possibility of being
excellent,
without
presence of Self,
without putting
who we are
into the space, isn't going to
happen
(you can try, but it'll
die
very quickly on the vine).
Definition
excellence noun
from the adjective
excellent
the quality of
presence of Self,
being impeccable, and being immaculate, applied to any and all
endeavors
<unquote>
That's my inquiry ie that's my discovery so far. That's
excellence,
newly. If it feels slightly rough and unfinished, it's
intentional.
It should be. It should be left incomplete. I'm not going to wrap it up
in a pretty box with a nice bow and ribbons for you. It's still a
work in progress,
so I'm leaving it exactly like this,
exactly the way it is:
untied, and just a tad ragged. If this discovery, if my inquiry into
what
excellence
is for me, ends here for you, then take it:
it's all yours.
But if you continue delving into what
excellence
is for yourself, if you continue to wrestle with it, if you continue
coming up with what distinguishes
excellence
for you, that's what will make this inquiry truly worthwhile.
