What are you doing, or not doing, to find “ordinary greatness” within your organization? You may find it in places you never imagined, and when you do, higher performance and increased productivity are very close.
One of the world’s greatest violinists, Joshua Bell, performed on January 23, 2007. His performance went largely unnoticed. This took place at L’Enfant Plaza Metro in Washington, DC People thought he was just another street performer as he was dressed in a T-shirt, jeans and wearing a Washington Nationals baseball cap. Three days earlier, people had paid $100 each to hear him play at Symphony Hall in Boston. Three weeks earlier, Joshua accepted an award for America’s Best Classical Musician. Playing in the DC subway was organized by the Washington Post, who asked Joshua to play there. It was an experiment to test if people would recognize it, but mostly to recognize greatness if you find it in a place where you don’t expect it to happen.
What would happen if everyone in your company persistently worked to the max? It is a simple notion with profound implications. After all, a company made up of the best people in the business is itself the best in the business.
Any company can create a culture of greatness. Why not? Most likely they don’t know how. Some people tend to think that there is some kind of magic bullet or secret formula to being the best, but that’s not true. Organizations have the ability to be great with all the resources and they just don’t see it. They just need a new set of eyes to see it or they’ve been so busy they’ve neglected it.
Ask yourself this important question: “Is the greatness that already exists in your organization being lost?” The answer you give demonstrates where you want to take your organization. Are you looking for the next step in your organization’s success, or do you want to stay where you are, in a safe and risk-free environment, doing the same ordinary things?
Those employees who earn minimum wages may be your next great employee. Explore with them their thoughts, ideas and opinions. You never know what’s really inside them. This is not to say that all employees are going to say that they are only working for a paycheck and nothing else.
This just goes to show that you need to know your employees no matter what level they work at. When organizations achieve extraordinary results, they are often generated by people who describe themselves as ordinary.
Ordinary people do great things. Many of these individuals go unnoticed. Greatness is overlooked on a daily basis, mainly because leaders simply fail to understand what is in front of them. Many organizations need to remove the blinders that prevent them from identifying and seeing greatness within their own organizations. These are the things that can drive high performance, higher productivity, and then create extraordinary results.
Explore the hidden value and buried talent within your organization. Most organizations and their leaders don’t look at what their employees can contribute beyond the ordinary. Some organizations hire to fill open positions, while others analyze each individual’s personality and work preferences and then match them to the specific job that best fits their needs. You may find that productivity will increase when you find the right combination, and greatness will shine to reflect the extraordinary results of your organization.
