“How many of you would like to be extraordinary in how you do your job?” This is the question that we use to start off each of our “Achieving World-Class Results” (AWCR) classes at McClaskey Excellence Institute. Undeniably, the whole class eagerly raises their hand.
Helping leaders take their next step towards being extraordinary is the key objective of the McClaskey Excellence Institute two-day class, “Achieving World Class Results”. Class participants are always surprised to find out that only about 10% of leaders want to go the extra distance to become extraordinary. You might wonder why 90% of the leaders, who as a whole are a group of very dedicated, talented, and hard-working people, do not want to lead their organizations to be as extraordinary as their organizations could be.
I have studied this issue for many years by talking with hundreds of leaders (which includes all levels of management) related to this very topic. What I have learned is that almost all leaders acknowledge that they could lead their organizations to a higher level than they are currently performing.
What is stopping them from striving to be extraordinary? Many leaders are uncertain of the return. They believe that they can only lead it to a slightly higher level and that the benefits would not be worth the time, effort, and energy that it would require. Another factor that appears to be a strong contributing cause as to why 90% of the leaders do not choose to be extraordinary is that it is a personal choice. The outside world is not forcing the organization or the leader to perform at a higher level to survive. For example, most success stories around dramatic organizational improvement involve organizations that were in crisis and implemented something to solve crisis that made things better.
McClaskey Excellence Institute is about helping leaders to drive their organization to ever-higher levels of performance before a crisis arises. If you are part of the 10% of leaders who strive to lead your organization to being extraordinary, it is essential to have your entire leadership team on board.
Convincing the leaders on your management team to be part of the 10%:
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You Won’t Have to Work as HardYes, you heard that correctly! Many believe that becoming an extraordinary leader would involve too much time, effort, and energy. In reality, the 10% of extraordinary leaders would shake their head and tell you the opposite. Most of the hassle that an organization faces is due to that fact that things are not being done correctly. The time, effort, and energy required to correct mistakes can be avoided if the emphasis is to be extraordinary. The first step is discovering and addressing the root cause of problems and simply prevent them. |
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Not So Risky BusinessAs we discuss in class, being extraordinary can increase your organization’s revenue or impact by 25% to 300% with little to no increase in cost. This makes striving to be extraordinary with your current facilities, products, and people that you have, one of the least risky and best investments available. |
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The Bridge to the 10% is ACTIONFor those that attend the Achieving World-Class Results class, an action plan is developed to implement one to two things in your organization within four weeks and another one to two things to implement within 90 days. Extraordinary leaders accomplish those action items and inspire their teams to do the same. Besides seeing leaders implementing their action items, another very powerful way to inspire others is to allow them to see Pal’s world-class operations first-hand. “Seeing is Believing” and the tour included in the AWCR has inspired many a leader to up their game. |