Starling Consulting has four Core Values: Intentionality, Excellence, Communication and Humanity. Today, I'd like to take a deeper dive into our second Core Value - Excellence.
To me, Excellence is a mindset, not a result. Creating a Culture of Excellence means hiring, mentoring and developing people who understand that anything worth doing is worth doing well. In everything we do, we commit to producing the best work possible, and to being fully present for the process.
That's not to say that we are work-output robots who perform perfectly every day. This is why I say Excellence is a mindset, not a result. I'm more concerned with people doing the best possible work they can on any given day. Sometimes, we are sad, or sick, or anxious, or angry. And on those days, there are times when the best we can do is to stay home and care for ourselves. But if we do decide to show up, we need to show up as the most engaged, authentic version of ourselves that we can muster that day. We have to leave it all on the field and then come back the next day and do it again. Our colleagues and our clients deserve that from us.
And finally, although Excellence in this context is not about results, it is about caring about the results. An Excellent employee cares deeply about their work product and takes pride in what they do, whether that is sorting the mail or balancing the books or developing a sales strategy. They've worked hard to develop the processes necessary to ensure quality work, every time, and to create scalable, replicable process for themselves and others.
At my company, I won't accept anything less than fully committed, excellent employees because I don't believe my clients will accept anything less than excellent work.