The Challenge

Mediocrity is both dangerously and subtly seductive. Mediocre is defined as “of only ordinary or moderate quality; neither good nor bad; barely adequate” (Dictionary.com, n.d.). Essentially, mediocrity is the opposite of excellent, which is synonymous with being superior. Without red belt hunger, you spend more time working around mediocrity than you do dealing with it. Consequently, you allow that which is average, ordinary, and not outstanding to linger within your organization. Because you learn to live with mediocrity, you are prone to permit it to endure even longer. Therein lies its seductive danger: The longer you live with mediocrity, the longer you live in mediocrity. No matter what aspect of your organization is mediocre, be it a strategy, policy, process, practice, or person, it will eventually infect your culture and seriously debilitate your ability to execute and achieve meaningful results. To fully implement and sustain master the art of execution (MAX), there must come a time when you get the pruning shears out and devastate mediocrity (both personal and organizational) rather than defend it, rationalize it, minimize it, externalize it, trivialize it, or compromise with it.

Take Responsibility for What's Mediocre in Your Organization

A clear sign of leadership maturity is the willingness to take responsibility. One aspect of this virtue is refusing to make excuses for personal failures or for the failure of others. Frankly, listening to others blame is one of my pet peeves. Little rubs me rawer than when someone attempts to defend failed actions or inferior results by sanitizing the fact that their past decisions to settle have caught up with them and are now costing them results. I am also convinced that excuses are the DNA of underachievers; they mark you as average, ordinary, and not outstanding. Good luck trying to earn buy-in, build trust, stay hungry, or implement MAX effectively when you're known as a defender of mediocrity—an aider and abettor of failed potential.

Here are five thoughts concerning mediocrity to help you or someone you care about right the course and stay on a path of personal responsibility. This path will elevate self-worth, as well as the value you bring to others and to your organization.

Five Truths about Mediocrity

1. Mediocrity begins with me. It is not something that an outside force does to you. No one is born mediocre; mediocrity is a choice. In fact, it is a result of the choices you have made, the conditions you have accepted, or the wrong actions you have taken during your career and life. Before you can hope to get your culture right, your team right, or the MAX process right, you've got to purge what's mediocre from your attitude, leadership philosophy, daily routine, and skill set. Furthermore, if you have little or no talent for what you're doing, and are mediocre as a result, you can still choose to go do something you're suited for and not settle for mediocrity. Again, spending your life mired in mediocrity is a choice!
2. Mediocrity is a personal concession to do less than your best. What the mediocre are really saying is, “This is good enough, so deal with it.” When you substitute compromises for excellence, you make the good enough concession and resign yourself to living out a career and life that are average, ordinary, and not outstanding, rather than the best they can be. (You may as well have your heirs put a big 0 on your tombstone while you're at it.)
3. You break free from mediocrity by making better decisions, not by waiting for favorable conditions. This should encourage you, because while you cannot control conditions, you do have control over your decisions. You can't choose what happens around you, but you can control the decisions within you.
4. Living in denial prolongs your marriage to mediocrity. Denial is defined as “disbelief in the existence or reality of a thing” (Dictionary.com, n.d.). Thus, if you don't face it, you cannot fix it. If you won't acknowledge it, you will never change it. The box of mediocrity you have put yourself in will one day become a casket. If you are settling for mediocrity, it is time to stop dog paddling as you tread water and start rocking the boat.
5. Make your break with any mediocre aspect of your life by deciding to do the following:
   1. Put away your tendency to blame, get your red belt on, and accept responsibility for your results. Understand that one of the best days of your life is the day that you renounce compromises to your potential, get serious, and become a man or woman of excellence.
   2. Commit to personal development so that you elevate the quality of your thinking and are able to make better personal decisions concerning your own attitude, character choices, application of knowledge, and strengthening of discipline.
   3. Get clearer about what you want, and then resolve to pay the price to achieve it. Decide up front to ditch the costly cop-outs that keep you from life's best, and hold yourself accountable for expecting and accepting only what is excellent.
   4. Determine right now what is average, ordinary, or not outstanding in your daily routine, personal habits or performance, relationships, culture, team, policies, practices, processes, strategies, et cetera. Upon doing this, redefine what excellence should look like in those areas, and realign, revitalize, or remove what's necessary to achieve that end.

Parting Thought

One of the saddest legacies for many who choose to lead mediocre lives will be that when they die, it will be as though they never lived. But what's sadder yet is that when the sweat of their deathbed wakes them up to the fact that they have missed their life and that it's too late, the classic lament of the mediocre will haunt them: “I could have. I should have. If only I would have.” Each day you really have only two choices: performance or excuses. Choose well because the result becomes your life and your legacy. Two choices. See? It's not rocket science!