Excellence: Winners Never Quit

I worked with hundreds of people over my time at Pushpay. Most people joined with high hopes and dreams that they would make a dent in the world. When staff joined our company they were so optimistic about what they could achieve, what they would earn, and how their role would develop over time.

Unfortunately, in most cases it didn’t always turn out the way both sides had hoped, which was a downer for the employee but also for the employer.

What happened?

In nearly every case I can recall, the bottom line was that the employee didn’t have the competency and/or drive to do their job with excellence.

Don’t be like Jake

There was one young man I vividly remember. Let's call him Jake. Jake joined the company as an SDR. Some of you know that being a SDR is a tough role. You have to make cold calls, warm up prospects through building value, and flip them over to an AE to close the sale.

When Jake joined, he had so much energy. He was bought into the company's mission, he wanted to learn and grow, and he was willing to pay the price to make his dreams come true.

I would leave my office at around 6:30 p.m. most days, and for the first month, Jake would still be sitting at his desk working hard and preparing for the next day by setting his calls lists ahead of time.

Over that month, I would stop by and encourage him. He'd ask what books he should read, and I'd suggest them. A few weeks later, he'd complete the book, send me a book report, and ask for a new recommendation. His results were excellent for someone who had just started.

I was certain that Jake was going to be a star. He had all the ingredients of someone who was a great employee, and he'd certainly become a great leader.

But then something happened.

After about three months, Jake was no longer outside my office working at 6:30 p.m. when I was headed home. The book reviews slowed, and he seemed to be a lot more tired. His results had also dipped.

After another three months, Jake was gone as soon as the clock hit 5:00 p.m. He didn't stay a minute past. He actively avoided me in the hallway, and his results were in dangerous territory. I knew that if he didn't change something he was going to be fired.

We made a point of moving underperformers on as soon as possible because the second someone has checked out, their performance begins to decline and will only continue to decline. Keeping someone like that on staff isn’t good for the employee or the business.

What excellence looks like

At Pushpay we had five core values we truly lived by. One of the most misunderstood on the list was excellence.

We talked about core values a lot. We made sure everyone knew what they were and could repeat them back when asked. We also regularly talked about what they meant to ensure every employee understood what was expected of them.

Here’s what we had to say about excellence: “Delivering Average is not acceptable. We will not settle for anything less than excellence.”

We then had the following subpoints:

Excellence starts with excellent people. Average does not cut it. Average performers are shown the door.

We never settle for acceptable.

We consistently show attention to detail.

We understand that excellence does not mean perfection.

We deliver excellence within constraints.

We do what we say we're going to do.

With a value like that, we had little room for error. You either hit your numbers or you didn't.

There are no shortcuts

Jake and I had an upcoming lunch scheduled. We had booked it a few months prior because I had some upcoming travel and wanted to get him on the calendar for when I was back.

Jake wanted to drive my Jeep, so I let him. We went to Chick Fil A for lunch. When we pulled into the car park, Jake told me that he was planning to quit Pushpay.

I asked him what he was going to do instead.

“Oh,” he said, “I think my life's calling is to be a motivational speaker. I'm going to be the next Tony Robbins.”

I almost choked on my chicken sandwich. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Someone who couldn't stick it out and achieve their targets wanted a job lecturing others on how they should succeed?

If I could have placed a bet right there that Jake would fail at being the next Tony Robbins I would have. I was certain that his new career would follow the course of his old one.

Excellence isn’t optional

Excellence is not optional in a startup. For those of us in the startup olympics, we have a goal to be the best in the world at what we do. That means we have to set a very high bar for what we expect. Our customers expect excellence from us, and therefore we have to expect excellence from our staff.

Here's what I think matters most when it comes to developing excellence:

One: Count the cost

Recently I shared this quote from Ronnie Coleman: "Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy ass weights."

We talk about running fast and long. In one of my previous articles I shared Arthur Lydiard's radical training methodology that in order to run fast, you first have to run long–really, really, really, really long. I also mentioned the 20-mile march and the consistency of effort every single day–it's not about sprinting and stopping.

Here's a great parable from Luke 14: “For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’”

What happens to people who begin things that they don't complete? The parable says that all who see it will mock him. Fools start things without counting the cost. Jake is now a cautionary tale because he didn't count the cost of what it would take to succeed.

Here's an incredible example of what this looks like: Bill Bellechick, the greatest coach of all time, was out in the rain one day recruiting and evaluating talent. He could have sent someone else to take the meeting. He could be on his boat relaxing, but no–he was personally grinding it out looking for incredible, undiscovered talent to join his team.

My takeaway from this is that the calling you have requires you to do the dirty work–not just all the things you want to do or the things you get praise for. If your life goal is to be a CEO, get used to doing crappy work all day because anything exciting gets done by someone below you in the org chart.

Two: Have self-awareness

The second thing it takes to be excellent is that you have to have self-awareness. Excellence is always seen from the eye of the receiver (or in most cases, the customer). Why must we set such high standards? Because customers demand it. That means organizations that want to succeed have to hold themselves to a higher standard so they can win their customers' trust. Successful businesses will win through making every single customer interaction absolutely incredible. This. is. not. negotiable.

If your manager is lifting the standard and asking more from you, you’re already failing. You should be lifting the bar yourself and delivering better outcomes because you demand excellence of yourself. If your manager has to force you to be excellent, something is wrong. And you certainly wouldn’t cut it in any company I’m running.

Keep in mind, the customer is the one who ultimately pays your paycheck. So you need to be obsessed with whatever needs to be done to serve the customer. Therefore, features that don't work, typos on the website, misaligned text, slow customer service, pushy and misleading sales tactics are not acceptable. Period.

Executives, managers, and individual contributors should all be regularly looking at the organization through the customers' eyes and asking, “Are we world class in every single interaction?”