Par is not good enough
"Time to liberate ourselves from the shackles of fiscal and psychological mediocrity!" -Michael Dorf, CEO
I just sent this to one of my team members in response to their overly positive comments around a poor showing at one of our locations. Clearly, I am mixing up the Passover metaphors with a somewhat assholely criticism of his comments to another employee. Luckily, I kept my email just to him, eliminating all the CC’s so that I didn’t look like a bigger Pharoah-dick to all the employees copied. I got a smiley face back from him, a very reasonable response to a boss who can be very prickly early in the morning before full saturation of coffee and after more than 4-cups of wine from the previous night.
But as I am thinking about the quote, which I added my name to show the “importance”, if not brilliance, of the comment (), I really do mean it, even if I am trying to deliver the message with some levity. I want to motivate and try so hard to break thru with honest and clear communication. To just hit a decent night of sales and feel a sense of accomplishment, to feel satisfied with just ok, is not ok. Having people feel like success is not having problems, not causing dissatisfaction, and achieving just a modicum of decent is actually bad. While I am happy that we didn’t get complaints, food sent back, or other negative issues; is that really all we want to achieve? Is our business all about playing defense? Just getting to par?
Don’t we want to wake up and more than just seize the day, but try and achieve what has not been done yesterday? Is it unrealistic to want to go a little further, hit a new goal, try and exceed what was done before? From reps at the gym, laps in the pool, or sales at our bars, is it wrong to want to do a little better than last time?
I ask these questions of myself and how to motivate the team to go more on offense, to try and “sell more”. What is the language and the psychology behind the words to make sure we are encouraging them achieve their best and push for just a little better. How to not feel satisfied with mediocrity, but look at par as what one expects to get. Yes, it’s the Master’s golf weekend, and just hitting par will not win, but you need to do much better than that if you are an elite player. How do we beat last year’s April sales and not feel satisfied with just getting par. What do I need to do to create elite management, getting our team to work and beat last year, last month, and hit new records. How can I inspire this mentality to improve the goal setting to achieve excellence and not accept mediocrity? This our biggest challenge—always push to beat par. (Now back to eating some mediocre matzah!)
I think as a business model, pushing for constant quality improvement and offering the best product and financial success and pleasing others (the customer)and getting as close to perfect functioning as possible makes a lot of sense. But in terms of just living life, constant driving for perfection and achievement can also lead to a chronic sense of dissatisfaction, and I think increased suffering in many ways. Lifelong growth is a different story. Finding peace feels like my goal, which of course includes taking on challenges and achieving things and just having fun. But always having to be better means never feeling like anything is good enough, and that seems like an uncomfortable way to live.
Chag Sameach. I enjoyed reading this. I like an interview with David Bowie in which he said artists fail when they become comfortable. He used a metaphor of swimming in the lines of going a little deeper in the water, and just when you can not feel the bottom anymore, you are there to create the new and take those risks. My dad used to tell me keep going, keep trying, keep learning, otherwise you become stagnant. You want consistency, yet just settling for the norm because it is consistent becomes boring. Quality within the venue to offer people and people working within the venue, as if it were their own, will always be a winning combination. The quality of the musicians you book at City Winery has always been above par.