Embracing Excellence in a Mediocre World

I would say we are the opposite of a give-them-a-pass internal culture. Our team leads are like the SWAT team of impact investing. They are already excellent people through and through, but when you get them together it’s a no-holds-barred approach. This is going to get done and it’s going to get done well. This year we gave ourselves the banner of sustainable excellence, or excellence sustained, which is different than excellence in general. It’s one thing to have a firework moment where you’re excellent in that moment in time, but it’s entirely different to sustain excellence in a culture where people say that’s not possible. The mindset you have to have to position yourself for that firework moment is completely different than the mindset required to sustain excellence over a long endurance period. It’s like celebrating one moment in time, the kind of thing that gets memorialized in songs or Olympic highlights. Our society today often gives permission to excuse mediocrity and say excellence is no longer possible. It has become the norm to give yourself a reason not to hit the mark. We saw that early on, too, when companies with impact missions were sometimes given a pass because they were doing social good, as if they didn’t need to achieve high marks of financial sustainability or excellence. We saw that as far back as 2012, but now it has shifted to giving a pass simply because the world is tough right now. The truth is, you still have to operate at a level of excellence and separate yourself in that regard.

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Embracing Continuous Improvement