Excellence isn't about meeting the spec, it's about setting the spec. It defines what the consumer sees as quality right this minute, and tomorrow, if you're good, you'll reset that expectation again.
The surefire way to achieve excellence, then, is not to create a written spec and match it. The surefire way is to be human. To be artistic: to make a connection with the customer and to somehow change them for the better. The reason Tom and I and others can continue to write about excellence twenty-five years later is that we're not writing about business at all. We're writing about people.
When the Ritz-Carlton hotel empowers every employee from chambermaid to manager to "make things right," they're not engaging in the sort of quality control most managers are comfortable with. In fact, if they were able to write down exactly what to do in every situation, the excellence factor would disappear. What the hotel accomplishes with its policy is this: they challenge their employees to become artists.
The art of connection, the art of being human, the art of making a difference. Artists do things that have never been done before. They dig deep to create passion. They connect by changing things for the better.
Seth Godin states the challenging truth at tompeters.com. Maybe it's shocking to read about artistry in business life. What's really shocking is that we all don't recognize our need to be artists.
Must have been the day for artistry posts. Later in the day I saw this post by Douglas Crets at Fast Company
Why do I write about this in Fast Company? I believe there is a strong parallel between the will of an artist and the management of a company, especially in an economic domain fueled by openness. I also believe that while corporate structures certainly give us the barriers and foundations that allow a given product set to thrive and prosper, they also inhibit...3. Be playful. Artists are good with starting out with a blank canvas and deciding what it is once they make it into what it is. Stop thinking so much about fitting into a protocol and just push it out. What comes out of your head, Zeus-like, might be not only original, but practical. Use that.