“Striving For Excellence”
Archie J. McGill
Vice President, Business Marketing-AT&T
National Business Marketing Conference
(These remarks followed a showing of the film “The Guitar Maker.”)
I first saw that movie about 15 years ago and ever since then it’s been a high point, reminding me of the craftsmanship that is necessary in all of us – whoever we are and whatever our chosen activity is. The guitar maker . . . couldn’t you just sense the calm inner confidence . . . the sense of oneness . . . the man and his work. The focus: relaxed, concentrated . . . the craftsmanship, the quality.
Whenever I think about quality or excellence, I’m reminded of a book – my favorite – that had a big impact on my life. The book is called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and it’s by a gentleman named Robert Pirsig. It was one of the most popular books on college campuses some eight or ten years ago.
Now, with a title like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I’m sure you’re wondering what the book could possibly have to do with Business Marketing or the Bell System . . . or, more importantly, you.
Just listen for a moment:
The hero of Pirsig’s novel has just returned to the university from which he graduated to teach a course in English composition. And a teacher he knew as a student, a lady named Sarah, comes by and says to him: “’I hope you are teaching quality to your students.’
“That was the moment it all started: that was the seed crystal . . . the inspiration, if you will. One thought was planted and within a matter of a few months, came an enormous, intricate, highly structured mass of thought, formed as if by magic.
“A few days later, when Sarah came by again, she stopped and said, ‘I’m so happy to see you’re teaching quality this quarter. Hardly anybody is these days.’
“What was she talking about, quality? Of course he was teaching quality. Who wasn’t?
“Quality . . . you know what it is, yet you don’t. That’s self contradictory. But some things are better than others. That is, they have more quality. But when you try to say what the qu7ality is, the words just don’t come.”
Pirsig suggests that if you look at a novice workman or a bad workman and compare the expression on their faces with that of a craftsman – whose work you know is excellent – you see the difference. The craftsman, he says, is ever following a single line of pursuit. He never follows a series of decision paths. He’s making decisions as he goes along.
Pirsig notes that the craftsman will be absorbed and attentive to what he’s doing – even though he doesn’t deliberately contrive to do this.
His motions and the machine are in a kind of harmony, as I suggested. He isn’t following a fixed set of written instructions because the nature of the material at hand determines his thoughts and actions and motions – which simultaneously change the nature of the material at hand.
The material and his thoughts are changing together in a progression of change until his mind is at rest . . at the same time the material is right.
* * *
So what, then, determines quality differences? Many of you answered that question in your replies to my letter – when I asked you for your thoughts on “striving for excellence.” Some of you had rather poetic answers, while others offered homely philosophy.
Listen to a few of these:
Judy Bessom of C&P says that “Excellence is for people who left the seeker stage of their lives and are motivated to be finders. Those are the ones with enthusiasm and drive to become winners.”
Tom Dyer of Southwestern says that “In striving for excellence, the emphasis should be on the word strive because it is an action verb – and the first thing you must do before you attain any level of achievement is move to action.”
Dick Niles from Wisconsin says, “Striving for excellence is the realization that achievement is never a complete entity with a well-defined beginning and end – but rather an ongoing process.”
New Jersey’s Walt Elser put it this way: “Excellence is an attitude of unrest . . . the strivers believe their results are more a factor of their own efforts, than of luck or other external circumstances.”
Dick Santagati of New England Tel tacked the idea down to a very personal, internal drive. He said, “We often assume that people who exceed a performance objective are excellent. Excellence goes far beyond this. It must be pursued with continued commitment. It must be accepted as an ideal.”
Dick, I could only add: as a way of life.
In a rather abrupt change of pace, Marc Cremin of Southern Bell approached the subject with a sense of humor – and certainly from a very pragmatic viewpoint. He quoted a favorite saying about dog-sledding that goes like this: “If you’re not the lead dog on the sled, the scenery never changes.” And while he didn’t say it – that’s what market leadership is all about.
On a more serious note, Barbara Hann of New York Tel wrote that excellence requires a personalizing of individual efforts, and internalizing of that concept. She said, “Others may motivate me, but the need to excel is something I always feel.”
A counterpart of Barbara’s at the New York company, Bill Cibbarelli, describes excellence as “dedication to ideals that separate the professional from the amateur.” That comment, by the way, sounds a lot like something Illinois Bell’s President Chuck Marshall told me a few weeks ago. He said our customers don’t expect our company to be populated with amateurs – and that if they get that perception of us, they’ll take their business elsewhere. He said his people dedicate themselves to being professionals by constantly thinking on the leading edge about everything that’s happening, about what’s changing in our business and in our customers’ businesses – and by never resting on past accomplishments or working with past knowledge and past techniques. Those who do, he cautioned, become tomorrow’s amateurs.
Well, you’re not amateurs. You, personally, are responsible for solving your customers’ problems. That’s what got you here. And for showing the whole world out there that the Bell System will survive, and survive gallantly in a highly charged, highly competitive marketplace.
Because of your extraordinary achievements, I feel in a rather strange, though certainly enviable position – a position of searching for words to direct and, perhaps, to inspire people who win simply as a way of life.
So, I’ll borrow a line from one of the Eagles’ songs: Take it to the limit . . . one more time.”
That’s really what it’s all about, isn’t it. That one extra effort you always find it possible to expend. That one last time you go after what looked like a hopeless competitive situation and turn it around. It’s an attitude of never quitting . . . never giving up. And determining for yourself that you will win.
Winning. It’s like nothing else in the world. It’s contagious. It’s like enthusiasm. That’s because winning is mostly a matter of attitude. Your attitude controls your actions. You can take a person with a reasonable amount of ability and a tremendous attitude – a will to win – and that person, time and time again, becomes a champion.
How does the winning attitude get started? Well, first you get somebody in a group who can really get things going. And you do things that seem to be beyond what is possible.. Then the others around you have someone to emulate, someone to keep up with. They begin to do things they didn’t believe they could do – because a winning attitude is contagious . . . motivation then comes from within the group . . . a winning attitude is infectious. Everyone moves toward that goal of achieving. Sometimes we call that peer pressure. Sometimes it’s a matter of inspiring the efforts of others – leadership. In either case, whenever somebody puts out that extra effort and just won’t give up – no matter what the odds – the team benefits. More important, the individual benefits. That’s human nature. It happens all the time in sports. And it happens all the time on a marketing team.
* * *
Let’s broaden our look at excellence and quality to the corporation.
McKinsey and Company, a management consulting firm that has helped the Bell System significantly in the past several years, wrote a report on excellence in the corporation. You may have seen that report capsulized in Business Week. The report focused on management practices of well-run organizations.
As a side note it might interest you to know how the article came about. One day, Fred Gluck, a senior officer from McKinsey, was talking to me about the idea for such a study. He told me they were thinking of telling business leaders that they had identified a number of management characteristics that ought to be followed to achieve success. I suggested he find out first from the leading companies what it is they do and what particular management characteristics they had in common.
They closely examined the management practices of some 37 companies and then distilled that sample to a smaller number of what they viewed as the ten “best run” companies among them. From that sample they came up with eight common attributes of quality characteristics that I would like to review briefly with you.
None of these attributes, by the way, depended on “modern” management tools or gimmicks. What was needed, according to the report, was time and a willingness on the part of management to think rather than to make sue of management formulas.
In all cases, too, the outstanding performers who were interviewed worked hard to keep things simple. They relied on simple organizational structures, simple strategies, simple goals and simple communications. The eight attributes that characterized this management style include:
First, a bias toward action. The key words they used to amplify that are: “try it, do it, fix it.” In other words, don’t analyze and question issues to death.
Second, a simple form and a lean staff. The idea here is to structure the organization along “small is beautiful” lines. Group functions should be kept simple in form, and the form should be separate, autonomous management groups – centralizing polity-making, decentralizing execution or implementation units. Such units or work groups must be self-sufficient and capable of taking action by themselves. By the way, I must tell you that the structure we are looking at for our future in focused exactly in that direction – a simple form, a lean staff and management units at the operational level that are largely self-sufficient.
The next characteristic: continued contact with customers. Customers are the first priority, the middle priority and the last priority. Customer contact and customer consciousness provided the insights that directed these companies. Customers are more than in integral element of the business, the needs drive those businesses.
Fourth, productivity improvements via people. There is no secret revealed here, either. Productivity can be improved by motivating and stimulating employees. Surely personal involvement is an effective motivator. However, in my judgment, it’s more an “individual” issue, and I’ll talk more about this later.
The fifth characteristic: operational autonomy to encourage leadership – entrepreneurship. This allows managers the freedom to make decisions and start programs on their own. It lets managers manage; let’s them make decisions; lets them offer advice. The obligation this implies, of course, is that top management must then listen actively when they do.
Sixth, the need to keep a principal focus. It’s important in these companies that they have a single-minded focus – from the chairman of the board right on down through the total corporation – one key business value – and that they stick to it.
Seventh, build on strength. That is, put the emphasis on what you do best as a corporation.
Last, to control with flexibility. This is not a contradiction, though it may sound like one. The key here is to control a few variables tightly, and to leave room for flexibility, looseness and creativity in others.
So there you have them. Eight basics of quality management. Of the well-managed companies, of the market leaders they looked at, all were customer driven . . . not technology drive . . . not product driven. And in each case, constant contact with the customer provided the insight that directed those corporations from the top of the corporation to the bottom. They key instructions: “try it, do it, fix it.” Don’t wait for a perfect plan. Get some data, do it and then adjust.
* * *
I said I’d also look at what quality means in terms of our society in general. Many people in the past several yeas have suggested that Americans may not even know if quality products and efforts are still viable elements of our civilization. They bemoan the lack of quality, or perhaps more realistically, the perception of a decline in quality in today’s society.
It appears to me that quality and excellence are sometimes confused with trying hard, spending a lot of energy – the puritan ethic.
To that I say, “Baloney.” You get no points for putting in effort. No points for expending energy. The puritan ethic by itself is dead. What counts isn’t the sweat that went into the doing – what counts is accomplishment, only accomplishment.
So, if accomplishments are what count, and if no limits are imposed on individual capabilities, and if we begin again to, as Frank Racz of our Illinois company suggests, coach our strengths and to develop again the ability to work as a team . . . what might happen?
Could a raising of our demands for quality with an emphasis on “doing it together” result in a sustained and positive effect on our American way of doing business?
Let’s talk about a country that has put quality into everything they do.
When I was in the Air Force and in Japan, I studied Japanese in night school at Sophia University. I became intrigued to the point that, for five years prior to joining the Bell System, I worked with a number of high-tech Japanese companies – they asked me to help them better understand world markets in order to apply technologies to those markets.
I marvel at and respect the Japanese, their productivity improvements, their concern for quality and respect for the individual, their establishment of create work environments, their close government interaction and their focus on worldwide markets. But, most important – and the key to their success – is their absolute commitment to the marketplace, their understanding of customer needs and their solutions to customer problems. That’s what makes them the envy of the world.
They understand that everything about a product communicates something important to the customer. The design of the product, including its shape, color and materials, and the performance and reliability of the product must be expressed in terms of consumer perceptions, as well as needs. They not only manufacture products, they manufacture customers. They use their marketing R&D as creatively as their technical R&D.
My experience in Japan suggests that there is a simple, basic understanding that everyone in the company has a stake in its present, a stake in its future – a very personal stake – a belief that “we’re all in this together.”
Not so far removed from our own philosophy, is it? Sort of a nationalistic version of “I Make the Difference.” And we too see how it can work . . .how, if we keep our sights set high enough and focused on that single target, our customers, they do come back, again and again.
Obviously, there’s a strong message to all American managers in the relatively new-found success of the Japanese -- and in their idealistic “quality factor.”
It is this: always depend on individual accomplishments, individual commitments, individual striving for excellence.
* * *
I’d like to turn briefly now to the subject of expectations – yours and mine.
In my travels around the Bell System, as I get together with various groups of people in our sales force, I sometimes get the feeling they’re looking to me to set some kind of pace, looking to me to set some kind of standard they can be measured by.
Frankly, I don’t expect anyone to meet my standards. They’re mine and they’re for me to grapple with. It’s up to each of us – to you – to set your own standards of excellence, your own goals within your limits. Those are and have to be personal. To some extent you can establish your personal goals in a fairly conventional way – using your job objectives as a gauge – NIBR, migration – a scope for sighting and marking off your personal aims. Objectives should be used this way, as guideposts only. But don’t make the mistake of using them for hitching posts, for ends in themselves.
From a personal standpoint, when I was selling, I had an objective similar to NIBR. And often I had specific product objectives as well. But I have to tell you that for all practical purposes I disregarded them in setting my goals.
First of all, with each of my customers I had a plan, and my plan was over an extended period of time – often 12, 18, 36 months in duration. And within that plan I knew exactly where I wanted my customer to go over time. Why? Because I knew what products I had and I could only sell those – and I wanted to have a plan that assured the customer’s actions and activities were focused on the problems that could solve and not necessarily all they wanted solved. Because it didn’t do me any good to have working on interesting problems, but problems for which I had no solutions and that couldn’t meet my objectives. And the only was I used my 12-month objective was to make sure that my objectives were three times whatever the 12-month objective was.
I’m convinced that by setting my sights in that way I was better able to cope with the realities of the year-to-year objective. In my particular case, I was able to exceed the objectives they set for me in the near team. But I never focused on them.
What I’m suggesting is that you do the same thing – that there’s absolutely no substitute, in my judgment, for having your personal plan, your personal goals, your personal concept of excellence as the value system by which you judge your actions. Certainly not the NIBR and not the migration. Those are merely guideposts along the way.
And speaking of guideposts, I asked each of you to come up with a line or two describing the correlation between subjective goals and objective measurements. Now, I have to tell you, on this subject I have a favorite: Tom Brennan, from New Jersey Bell. Tom compared these two measurements to ice-skating and to judging the best skater’s performance. He said, “Two aspects of a performance must be judged. The first involves the school figures: is the skater able to do all the mechanics of the sport? It is an objective look at the marks left on the ice. This objective measurement, however, does not tell you if the person skates with beauty, with flair, and even courage. Those are judgments that can only be made subjectively. Neither measurement by itself would tell who the best skater was – both have to be considered.” Tom, the analogy is super.
In other words, there are two parts to the program: the school figures, like our objective measurements, examine the traces in the ice. They tell you where you’ve been. Bit it’s free-skating that allows a skater to show personal style and exhibit the form and attitude of a winner. It’s telling, too, that in competition 75 percent of the performance is measured on free-skating – on the subjective portion of the performance. For most of you, I’m sure, your own subjective aims, your free-style approach to your job, probably outdistance your objective measures by a long shot.
Think for a moment about your own subjective goals . . . your own version of excellence on the job, in your family, in your church, community . . . think about it in the context that they will give you feedback about the need for mid-course correction to meet your various objective goals.
NIBR? That’s just a score that others use to measure you. Use it as feedback, nothing more. I know from reading all your comments on this subject that most of you have already found, like I have, that other people’s expectations of excellence are lower than your own. What’s a 100 percent goal? It’s something you pass by – way by – in pursuit of excellence in any calendar year.
Here’s what I’m talking about. This came from Katherine Brown of New England Tel: “I find that by striving for the best I can achieve, my personal goals exceed the performance measurement objectives set for me. I concentrate on what my customers need and what I can do for them . . . and the performance measurements take care of themselves.”
Susan Osborn from Pacific Tel had this to say: “I think realistic objective performance measurements are necessary to run a business. When subjective goals correspond with those measurements, it becomes possible for individuals to excel.”
I also like the way Mark Heckendorn from C&P has set up, in his own mind, the relationship between these two measurements. He says, “I believe subjective goals, many of which are non-business goals, are the essential fuel that sustains daily motivation toward the objective, measurable goals required to manage a business activity. Objective achievements are the milestones that reinforce an awareness of progress toward a personally chosen destination – a destination as unique as the individual imagination.”
All in all, there’s no doubt in my mind that each of you has a good feel for what our measurement systems, corporate and personal, are all about.
Well, we’re closing in on the end of our path toward excellence. I have only one more item to cover with you – a way of building on our interpretations of excellence: The Council of Leaders.
The Council of Leaders is another step in the continuing evolvement of our strategy, of our plan, to recognize those of you who are making the difference.
Acapulco has been . . . is . . . great. But it will be over soon and I want to say that now is the time to begin setting in motion your plans for qualification in The Council of Leaders in 1982. As you know, for those of you who become part of it – and I hope all of you will be – it will involve a lot more than recognizing our top people for their outstanding contributions. It will mean a year-long membership in a very elite group. Those who gain entry to the council will represent the highest standards of excellence. They will participate in an ongoing program – part of a consulting organization and feedback group to top executives throughout your company and AT&T.
The council will provide a means of getting together with the other top professionals in Marketing across the country, throughout the year to exchange ideas and share experiences. Those of you who qualify for the council will be 1982’s pacesetters.
I need your individual support and commitment as we move forward. The reason for that is obvious: it’s you who make the difference – every time out.
Before I leave, I’d like to answer Sarah’s question. You remember Sarah, don’t you, back at the beginning of our little talk? Sarah asked, “Are you teaching quality to your people this year?”
Your work, your results and your incredible spirit tell me – yes. And I hope you’ll hone that sense of quality ever finer. The striving never ends.
Pat Duncan at Southeastern said it all: “Striving for excellence is like chasing an elusive butterfly. It is ever changing, never captured and always beautiful.”
Bob Oswald from New York Tel says a sale professional must have the feeling of “never having arrived.” And that’s how I see it, too. My definition of excellence is to develop that attitude of “never having arrived” because it allows for tremendous room for improvement.
Then combine that attitude with inner confidence, inner drive, inner enthusiasm, the right environment and growth potential. Let your definition of excellence define you.
The corporation can and does provide you with opportunities for excellence, but you make it happen – every time you decide that “I Make the Difference.”
Again, to quote Pat Duncan: “Striving for excellence is like chasing an elusive butterfly. It is ever changing, never captured – and always beautiful.”
Thank you all for helping me with my remarks today.
# # #