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Why Have Excellence When You Can Have Mediocrity?

We spend a lot of our time talking and writing about ways to improve teams and organizations. But we were recently handed a copy of a May 7 Business Week article, “5 Ways to Ensure Mediocrity in Your Organization” and we figured we should help out those people who are looking to decrease their overall performance levels.      

Obviously, we hope your goal is to retain and motivate top talent. If so, you can treat the list below as “What Not To Dos” in your organization. However, for those of you who actually want to downgrade your organization, according to Business Week, here are five sure-fire strategies:

1. Make sure your employees know you don’t trust them.
2. Don’t tell your talented people why they shine.
3. Keep you’re A-level players in the dark. They will soon become C-level players.
4. Belittling new ideas ensures your staff knows you value docility over ingenuity. This behavior is especially effective when done in a group setting.
5. Disempower your workforce by squashing any signs of individualism..

Each of these behaviors has the potential to derail your organization and can introduce malaise. If you choose not to have this be your fate, whenever you see small examples of any of these “strategies,” you must address them early and exorcise them.      

You need to be vigilant to ensure that, whether the news is bad or good, it is being shared, and that you are encouraging your team, collectively and individually, to communicate, and strive for, better ways to drive the business forward. As the leader of your business, it’s up to you to set the right tone. It’s also up to you to make sure that your senior managers are also acting in a positive and motivating manner.      

If you are looking for some ways to engage and keep your top talent, you can read last October’s article entitled Keeping the Right People 'On Your Bus.' But if you are looking for mediocrity, the five steps above should do the trick.      

Maintaining excellence isn’t easy. Perhaps that’s why so many companies circle down to mediocrity.      

Don’t let it happen to your business!

This publication is part of Blackman Kallick’s marketing of professional services, and is not written tax advice directed at the specific facts and circumstances of any person and/or entity. Contents of this publication are of a general nature, and you should not act on this information without obtaining professional advice from your business advisor that is appropriately tailored to your individual needs and circumstances. This written advice is not intended or written to be used, and cannot be used by any taxpayer, for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed under the Internal Revenue Code.