Leader: "Hey guys did you finish the way I wanted?"
Them: "Well, 'within reason'!"I get this from time to time. As a leader that is such a scary reaction phrase when assessing completion. As a worker/volunteer/intern who doesn't have a strong grasp of excellence, this creates a large gray area of unfulfilled duties, a sort of sick justification. The toughest project for a team leader is to produce the culture in which the hands have a degree or sense of self-responsibility, self-motivation. When they lack this it slowly forces the leader to micro-manage, which any good leader dreads and never wants to walk in that role, at least the good ones. There are some manager/leaders that thrive on the micro-management philosophies. Scary land.

'Within reason' could be defined as 'within the bounds of good sense or practicality'. However within bounds is still missing the mark. Later we can debunk the difference between perfection and excellence but for now lets tackle the issue of...

This guy named Jesse at Buckle introduced himself to me. We talked about professionalism in the market place and taking pride in our job. He told me how once he went to P.F. Changs in Scottsdale and ordered food, a plate that he orders custom, half shrimp and half scallions, however this time it was horrible. He then ordered another plate and it was horrible too, two in a row.

He payed and left and went to the P.F. Changs in Tempe and ordered the same meal. He payed twice to get what he expected, in order to get the best that the restaurant had. He explained to them... 

In one of my recent grad projects we had to identify several gaps within our organization. Once identified came the task of trying to figure out the root cause. After knowing the cause the next process was to lay out a plan on how to fix the initiatives. Then the final task of the project was to point out any resistance to the initiatives.

What is tough is not identifying the gaps. We are good at that. We are great at looking at the flaws of a system, item, or process, and sometimes we are even good at exploiting those gaps to help out our own cause. However most of the times we do not...

George Rathman, a charismatic chemist, felt that the purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline. He also felt that problem largely goes away when you have the right people in the first place. George was the co-founder of Amgen from back in 1980 who brought the company to $1 billion by 1996.

Jim Collins says in his book, Good to Great, "Everyone would like to be the best, but most organizations lack the discipline to figure out with egoless clarity what they can be the best at and the will to do whatever it takes to turn the potential into reality."

If you have heard me speak or heard my life story you have heard the words resonate from my lips...

Jeff, a disbarred lawyer, on a TV show called, Community, signs up for a class at a community college that he heard was an easy ‘A’. When Professor Whitman tells the class to throw their textbooks away and simply "seize the day and live in the moment" to get an 'A', Jeff thinks he has hit the jackpot. Jeff encourages his study group to take a class that is supposed to be a breeze. This class has no tests, quizzes, papers, and appears to be no homework in the modern sense, except to ‘Carpe Diem’, Seize the day.

Professor Whitman catches on to Jeff’s carelessness and freewill desire for an ‘A’ and tells him he must ‘live life’ or face an ‘F’. Jeff begins doing all kinds of acts in front of Whitman to get caught living the moment, flying kites, dressing funny, etc. However Whitman calls him out each time. Professor Whitman finally tells him...