Since I work around various artistic organizations, I run into the word "excellence" a lot. You often hear phrases like "seeking the highest levels of artistic excellence." Another example: I recently heard about a music school that was "nurturing excellence." And of course, a lot of business consultants and speakers talk about inspiring, achieving, and searching for excellence. This all sounds wonderful of course, but here is my question:
What the hell does that mean?
For example, when you talk about "artistic excellence," are you referring to precision of intonation? (For non-musicians: that means playing really, really, really in tune, which, in a purely technical sense, is largely impossible.*) Does it refer to rhythmic precision? (For both musicians and non-musicians, this is also somewhat nonsensical, as variations in the core mechanical beat are what make a performance of a piece of music unique and magical.)
I don’t know, maybe it refers to everyone having their tuxedos cleaned prior to the show.
In the business realm, does this refer to the delivery trucks being really clean? Or does excellence in business mean making more money? Or is it defined as an essential step to doing so? And if it is defined by something other than actual numbers, who defines what that standard of excellence is?
I must confess, I’m a bit of stickler when it comes to issues of semantics. It’s part of how I pursue "excellence" in my writing. So I feel compelled to dig into this.
The trouble with the word "excellence" is that it is really just a vague expression of what we subjectively like. It is a nice lofty vague ideal, and talking about it in meetings as a goal makes everyone nod in agreement. But here is the problem:
If your standard is to be “excellent,” well, how many sane people do you know who think they are actually excellent? Most of the top performers I know are exceedingly humble, as they know they are always one small step away from the abyss of screwing up royally.
Also, from a performance mind set perspective, it’s not a good idea to start accepting “excellence” as a standard, because if you do, when you have to actually stand up to give a presentation, you will be defeated by the overwhelming weight of this unreachably high standard you have set for yourself, and your constant sense of failing to meet this lofty standard will no doubt make your presentation even less excellent. Ugh. You can read from a carefully prepared statement, but lack of any errors does not mean excellence in my book.
And while it’s nice to always be headed towards excellence, if you can never actually get there, isn’t that sort of a designed failure? Not good for the confidence, I am afraid.
Also, if your goal is to be “excellent,” when and where do you do the "non-excellent" stuff, like failing and experimenting and mistake-making, that is so essential to doing something truly new and innovative? (Blatant commercial insertion here: this is one reason why I wrote my book, Principles of Applied Stupidity–to free you from the belief that you have to be excellent all the time.)
I have found, more often than not, that such high ideals can hurt as much or more as they help. You are much better off accepting your own oddities, frailties as well as the frailties and oddities of your audience. Connection is so much more interesting than perfection.
Well I don’t want to stop anyone from seeking the highest levels of artistic excellence. But just fyi, I have some slightly used lowest-level excellence here that I can let you have cheap.
© Justin Locke
