“The nobility of excellence wins over the nobility of effort.” Frances Frei
I recently got to hear Harvard Business School Professor Frances Frei speak at the Growth Faculty Summit. Amongst many thought provoking insights, she stressed that “in order to be great, we have to be bad.”
For those perfectionists amongst us, this would be no mean feat. However, if you are willing to be bad at things, it does free up space to create continual excellence in those areas that you can choose to be great in. Frances Frei cited many examples such as Southwest Airlines, who chose to excel in what was important to their customer, but also chose to be worst in the market at what was the least important to their customer.
The question she posed was; “if you want to be best in class, do you have the stomach to be the worst?”
This got me thinking about some questions we could ask ourselves. Thinking about work, what could you start being bad at?
Do you and your team know what you are great at, and is it publicly acknowledged? Would new recruits know what you are known for, and also on the flip side what you are known to be bad at?
In what areas are you and your team creating continual excellence? Do you put time aside to discuss best practice and improvement, or are you like headless chooks putting out fires or attending action- or outcome-less meetings?
What can you simplify, omit or just dismiss as being bad at it?
We can apply this choice of course in all areas of our life. It’s a refreshing concept that relieves pressure and frees up thinking space to focus on what you’re great at instead of spending unnecessary energy and resources on what you’re not great at.