Excellence

Hey! Good morning team. It is Wednesday, that’s right Workshop Wednesday. I’m out here on my deck, the sun is about to come up. It’s a beautiful crisp morning. I’ve got the fire going although, with the breeze, it’s still pretty cold.

I wanted to talk to you a little bit about competency. I was reading this morning in John Maxwell. Let me read this to you. He quotes a man named John Johnson about excellence and it’s kind of a neat thing because we have our core value and our core purpose be valuable because nothing less will do. I like to talk about excellence from time to time and this gentleman puts it a little differently. He says success bases our worth on a comparison with others. Excellence gauges our value by measuring us against our own potential. I’m going to say that again.

Excellence gauges our value by measuring us against our own potential.

I like that. Nobody wants to be mediocre. As a matter of fact, John Maxwell says that mediocre, the meaning literally means halfway up a stony path. So mediocre is doing something halfway, being half done, not being completed. And I like the statement where it said, success measures you.

Are you successful? Well, how do we gauge success? Do I have a nicer car than the Joneses? Is my house bigger? Do I have a nicer pair of shoes? Do I have the new updated iPhone? Success is always based on outward appearance sometimes or you got a better GPA or you got into a better college or things like that.

We measure ourselves against each other whereas excellence is for everybody. It’s on your own value and worth of what you can personally accomplish based on your purpose and your plan.

So the reason I like that so much is I worked in an industry working with people with disabilities for years. By early life, I started to notice we had these individual support plans. We called them ISPs, individual support plans. For one person the entire three months, the next quarter, might be for that individual to be able to open a door. Now, some of you are sitting there looking at me saying, “Are you serious Chad?” I’m serious. It would take an entire quarter of working with this one person to teach them how to open a door. And for somebody else, it was doing their laundry. For somebody else, it was how to make dinner.

Each person individually was pursuing their own excellence based on what they could do.

Here at Northwest Enforcement, I like that because I want you to be excellent not just successful. I want you to base your excellence on what you can accomplish. We all have been given a measure of purpose by our creator and as we get close to this Christmas, which is coming up here in just a few days, just a few more days is Christmas. I want you to think about the New Year in the next week or two.

I want you to be excellent. Come up with your own ISP. Your own individual support plan. What can we do? What can I do to support you in 2023 to be excellent? To measure and engage against your performance last year. For some of you, it’s going to be a little bit different than others. We’re not looking for you to be better than Chad and we’re not looking for you to be better than Sonja or Christina or Karen. We’re looking for you to be better than you. Better than you were yesterday. One step further on that stony path up that mountain. So on this Workshop Wednesday, start processing. Start thinking.

What can I do to be more excellent than I was yesterday?

In 2023, what do you want to accomplish? Start setting some measured goals. I’m not talking about setting that I want to lose 30 pounds and I’m going to start working out. I’m not talking about those resets in that way. I want you to set measured goals.

Once you set your own individual support plan, and then start measuring it and then get an accountability partner. Maybe a leader. If you want to send it to me, I will reach out to you every so often and ask you, and probably throughout 2023. I will do Workshop Wednesday check-ins on your individual support plan. So write that down ISP, my individual support plan this year for me. And then start making some measured goals on that stony path so that you’re not mediocre. You’re not just halfway there. Don’t do anything halfway. Go all the way to the summit, all the way to the top. The view is beautiful. You’ve got this.

All right, I probably won’t be talking to you guys again until after Christmas. So well we might do a thankful Thursday tomorrow but the important thing is Merry Christmas. God bless you and have a beautiful Christmas with your family. Those of you that are working God bless you. Thank you so much. I know that you’re on the schedule, some of you didn’t want to be but you’re taking it for the team. You’re doing your job for your community and we appreciate you for that…and we will pay you time and a half.

All right. God bless you, guys be valuable nothing less will do and I will see you next week.