Values : The fuel for Excellence

When we talk about Excellence, it is a quality that is only evident when it is sustained over a continuous period of time. Any temporary performances of brilliance cannot be termed as Excellence, because they are mere fireworks which light up brightly and then fade away into darkness.

It is important to have a foundation on which the edifice of excellence can be built into a magnificient and resilient structure. There needs to be a fuel which can sustain the urge for excellence on a continuous basis and ensure that we are forever energised in its pursuit. Such a powerful and inexhaustible source of energy can only come from VALUES.

VALUES are the principles which we can look upto for guidance and direction. They lead the path for us and show us the right way of conducting ourselves. We also tend to need them more when the chips are down and we are facing the most complex challenges. In a way VALUES differentiate the genuine from the fake and the everlasting from the momentary.

The fundamental beauty of VALUES lies in the fact that they can radically change the person or the team who are keen on using them. There is no colour, caste, creed, financial, national, cultural dimensions which can stop anyone from imbibing VALUES. Everyone has it in himself or herself to derive and apply the guiding principles in their personal and professional spaces.

It is important to understand one concept regarding VALUES i.e. we can fool everyone else when it comes to propogating an immaculate and a virtuous image, however, we cannot ever fool our own selves. In that sense, we are actually looking into a mirror and seeing what the reality is. This reality is what can help us decide on the next step and make the correct decision. In almost all situations, the right answer lies inside our hearts and the trick of discovering it involves falling back on our VALUES and letting them guide the way.

Without exception, the exemplary leaders in our history, be it in any discipline or specialisation, have all had a strong foundation in VALUES. They have all stood firm by their principles with unshakeable faith and trust in the face of the most severe challenges, where lesser mortals would have blinked and lost their path. In that sense, the difference between making it or losing out, more often than not, are the set of VALUES which are either embraced or ignored.

The wonderful significance of VALUES as explained in a wonderful quote by Mahatma Gandhi:

Keep your thoughts positive, because your thoughts become your words.
Keep your words positive, because your words become your behavior.
Keep your behavior positive, because your behaviors become your habits.
Keep your habits positive, because your habits become your values.
Keep your values positive, because your values become your destiny.

Common personal values (Roy Posner):

Accomplishment, Success
Accountability
Accuracy
Adventure
All for one & one for all
Beauty
Calm, quietude, peace
Challenge
Change
Cleanliness, orderliness
Collaboration
Commitment
Communication
Community
Competence
Competition
Concern for others
Content over form
Continuous improvement
Cooperation
Coordination
Country, love of (patriotism)
Creativity
Customer satisfaction
Decisiveness
Delight of being, joy
Democracy
Discipline
Discovery
Ease of Use
Efficiency
Equality
Excellence
Fairness
Faith
Family
Family feeling
Flair
Freedom
Friendship
Fun
Global view
Good will
Goodness
Gratitude
Hard work
Harmony
Honesty
Honor
Independence
Inner peace, calm, quietude
Innovation
Integrity
Justice
Knowledge
Leadership
Love, Romance
Loyalty
Maximum utilization (of time, resources)
Meaning
Merit
Money
Openness
Peace, Non-violence
Perfection (e.g. of details)
Personal Growth
Pleasure
Positive attitude
Power
Practicality
Preservation
Privacy
Problem Solving
Progress
Prosperity, Wealth
Punctuality
Quality of work
Regularity Resourcefulness
Respect for others
Responsiveness
Results-oriented
Rule of Law
Safety
Satisfying others
Security
Self-givingness
Self-reliance
Service (to others, society)
Simplicity
Skill
Speed
Spirit in life (using)
Stability
Standardization
Status
StrengthSucceed; A will to-Success, Achievement
Systemization
Teamwork
Timeliness
Tolerance
Tradition
Tranquility
Trust
Truth
Unity
Variety
Wisdom

Article 5: Self Belief

Every one of us have our own unique set of skills and talents. It is vital that we are able to recognise our strength and at the same time we should also be able to identify our areas of improvement. The more we are able to use our talents in our work lives, the better is our productivity and our quality. This in turn increases our self confidence and enables us to take on higher challenges and face them squarely.

However, many times, we end up imposing self-defined limitations on ourselves. Our self-doubt gets created from niggling failures and past experiences which stop us from trying again in the fear of repeated failure.

In this situation, what is important for each one of us is to introspect and find out the root-cause of the doubts or self-imposed limits. Once we are able to define the problem, it is easier to eliminate it and to overcome our doubts. In other words, we need to improve on our self-belief and be confident in our abilities.


Self belief is the ability of an individual to focus on performing at or higher than his percieved capabilities with a complete awareness of the challenge on hand and his own talents/skills. It is important that self-belief is formed on a solid foundation of self understanding and is not just a facade of overconfidence or blind optimism. The latter lead to underperformance and cannot overcome the real lack of skills in the individual.

On the other hand, self-belief helps affirm the positive attitude in an individual and produces vigour, energy and healthy optimism. It allows optimum attention span to the task at hand and an alertness which is not normally observed in normal individuals. It succeeds in raising the productivity and also the alignment of all faculties towards a common goal.

As individuals, we tend to get bogged down with our failures and one sure way of avoiding that is to use these failures to learn the maximum and to improve our knowledge and awareness. This way, we can improve on our confidence and self belief.

One of the greatest basketball players of all times - Michael Jordan has this to say about how he used his failures and converted them into positive self-belief:

"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

Article 4: Attention to details

Excellence is the cumulative effect of each task being performed with the same amount of dedication and commitment, repetitively and without any drop in quality. We often tend to mistake excellence for brilliance - which can shine briefly and then fizzle away.

Excellence is "permanent brilliance".

An excellent performer does not need to be the most jazzy or the most exhuberant person. He/she just needs to have a knack to sustain their good work at the same level throughout.

To quote an example of this, we should evaluate the evolution of an avid swimmer to an olympic swimming champion. To begin with, we have the avid swimmer who loves swimming and is aware of its benefits. Somewhere in his interest for the sport, he discovers his aptitude to excel in the same and starts gearing up for competitive life. Now the fun begins in right earnest when a hobby suddenly becomes a profession. All of a sudden, our swimmer starts following the game in earnest and starts focussing on improving his swimming skills.

What follows is simply amazing - the art of swimming is honed to perfection over the course of a few years and a completely scientific program for improving fitness, flexibility, focus and finesse is put into action. Every movement is analysed, each muscle is toned. The diet is completely regulated and thus vital seconds are shaved off from the performance of our swimmer. He has a planned routine which ensures complete dedication towards achieving his goal and slowly the timings start improving.

What is noteworthy is the fact that while the original endeavour was to reduce seconds, gradually the improvements start getting smaller in dimension, however much more significant i.e. milliseconds start figuring in the equation and aerodynamics and body weight, positioning, breathing techniques all matter a lot towards this goal. All this is nothing but attention to detail and a sense of direction being amalgamated to a perfectly balanced mix.

Swimming was just one example. There are countless such examples that we could review and yet arrive at the same conclusion - champions are created out of a sense of pure dedication combined with detailed planning and a focus on doing everything right - day in and day out.

A study of the rigorous fitness schedules and strict discipline followed by Michael Schumaker, Sachin Tendulkar, Roger Federer, Lance Armstrong or Sergey Bubka would provide ample proof of the tremendous ambition and attention to detail exhibited by each one of these living legends. These qualities are paramount in their development plans and finally culminate into the making of these champions.

Hence each professional can achieve success and better productivity by following this simple mantra in their chosen field of excellence:

“A man's accomplishments in life are the cumulative effect of his attention to detail.” - John Foster Dulles

Article 3: The Power of Perspectives

There is an old story of two masons working on a grand project to construct a place of worship. Both were entrusted with difficult and challenging tasks and were equally diligent in their approach and dedication.

When stopped in the middle of an unusually hot and tiring day of unending labour and toil and asked as to what he was doing, the first mason replied (with a slight hint of exasperation!) "Can't you see what I am doing? I am spending all my energy and strength to break these huge thankless boulders of solid rock for a few pennies which will keep alive my poor family. My sweat and blood flows cheap and brings a pittance in return."

Surprisingly, the second mason, working just a short distance away, seemed to be unflustered and was humming a prayer while doing the same amount of work effortlessly. When asked the same question, he welcomed the questionner and invited him to sit in the shade and partake in his grand vision. He said "My dear friend, I am building this great house of God with my own hands. I am shaping this beautiful sculpture with my love and prayer. My dear God is kind enough to feed my entire family each day while I create his abode. When it is finished, my soul will be blessed and I will have earned my entry into Heaven along with all my loved ones."

So it is with each one of us that we have a choice at every step in our life. It is a simple choice of Perspective that we need to make - one that can easily lead us to either heaven or hell. The funniest thing about it is that no one else can make that choice for us and hence we cannot blame anyone else for anything that happens in our life.

So what is this perspective that we are speaking about and how can it make or break everything that we ever dream of doing? All of us are aware of how the physics of friction can either help or hinder us in our work or actions. Taking the example of a car which has a lot of interconnected moving parts and lubrication is used to keep friction to the minimum within the engine. However, equally important is the use of friction which enables us to brake the car and control our speed effectively.

Amazingly the force of friction can be equally powerful even in our minds although it cannot take any physical form there. Our productivity and efficiency can be affected tremendously depending on the amount of friction that we simulate within our grey cells.

Perspective can either be a liberating sense of smoothness and infinite capabilities or it can be the grinding force of opposition which stops us dead in our tracks!

The great Albert Einstien tried to define perspective and did a beautiful job of it - "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."

Article 2: A Higher Sense of Purpose

A basic quality of Excellence is the fact that it takes us to a different level of output - where our normal doubts, fears, limits are rendered ineffective and we are performing at a much higher level. For as long as it exists, this "zone" enables unknown powers and special qualities within us to come to the fore and guide us to give our very best. So what is this "zone" and how can we elongate its presence and existence within ourselves?

The answer to this lies somewhere else. As a first step of investigation, we need to understand what exactly drives a person to break the "inertia" of normal performance. Once we know the drivers which enable excellence within ourselves, we would have gone a long way in demystifying the phenomenon and mastering the art of raising ourselves to that level at will.

The simplest reason for any action to be performed is that there needs to be a reason or purpose. Without a sense of purpose, any action would be random and non-productive - because there would be no criteria for measuring the outcome of the action or its effectiveness. A simple test would be to quickly think of what we do as normal activities and ask this question - Why do I do this? Let's try this game for a few examples:

1) Why do I "breathe"?

I breathe so that I may live.

2) Why do I "sleep" ?

I sleep in order to rest myself and re-energise my power. I sleep because I need to refresh myself and be able to live normally.

3) Why do I "work"?

I work for earning a livelihood - so that I can support myself and my dear ones and provide for the safety of our future. I work for my self-satisfaction and I work in order to be happy

The simple message is that each one of us can ask these questions to ourselves and come up with our answers - and all our answers would contain valid and personal reasons.

So how does having a reason help me with improving my quality of output, or in other words make me achieve Excellence!!?

In simple words, a reason essentially provides a sense of direction and purpose to any action. It guides us to go ahead and attempt the task in a planned and methodical manner. Knowing the outcome and its benefits gives us a sense of motivation and helps in focussing on achieving success.

Our history bears witness to the glorious achievements of its most brilliant heroes when they have been ignited by a sense of mission and commitment and have overcome tremendous obstacles and challenges to accomplish their goals.

Where most of us tend to live our lives regretting the past or fearing the future, these brave folks have resisted the temptation and instead chosen to live a life focussed on the "present moment" and given all their energies and dedication to the task at hand. This is the simple secret that separates us from the achievers and by understanding this difference and working hard on overcoming the normal tendency, we can unlock our true potential and emulate our role models.

All it takes is a spark of motivation to light a fire of imagination and unlock the tremendous potential which lies within each one of us.

Article 1: Excellence - The basics

"Excellence" - is a very intriguing concept. We all seem to think that we know all about it and can be excellent whenever we want to - just as if it is a matter of switching a button on. We all would love to believe that excellence is a virtue that we possess inside ourselves and can command to appear whenever we wish.

Yet, in our day-to-day life, we continue to take the easier options and to avoid the difficult route towards ensuring consistent excellence in everything that we do. Part of it is our attitude and the other part is our perception that we should not exert ourselves unnecessarily - after all, excellence is only a step away!! So why bother to pursue it all the time?

Somehow our basic nature tends towards taking the shortcut in everything that we do. However, it is not true for everyone and there are a few amongst us who have overcome this inertia and have imbibed a passion for excellence in their approach and performance. What differentiates these individuals from the rest of the population? Why is it that they eschew any option which leads to the mundane and the ordinary output? It is this very streak of persistence that differenciates the true professional from the amatuers and now we will try and understand this concept of excellence in further detail.

So what exactly is "Excellence"? Is it a secret magic potion which only a few of us have the luxury of tasting and imbibing? Or is it the adrenaline which only pumps in our veins for a few seconds sometimes when the stakes are the highest, before we return back to our normal state of existance. What differentiates the good from the great and the great from the excellent and the excellent from the perfect?

In this blog, I will attempt to put down some lessons, ideas, examples and theories that I have learnt over the past 10+ years of my professional life and also from my interactions with my friends, colleagues, family and mentors. For me, this is a journey of introspection, self-awareness and fulfillment of my dreams - to raise my own self above the perceived limits of my existence and to achieve the true purpose of my life.

I invite you to join me on my mission and become my partner and mentor.