Q 690. What is the Paradox of Excellence? What are its adverse effects on the excellence journey of an organization? Include some remedial measures in your answer.

 

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The Paradox of Excellence is a curious situation where an organization's relentless pursuit of perfection can actually hinder its progress and overall performance. It's like aiming for the moon but getting lost in the stars.
 

Adverse Effects of the Paradox of Excellence

When an organization becomes overly fixated on achieving excellence, it can lead to several negative consequences:

Adverse Effect	Description
Fear of Failure	A culture of perfectionism can create a fear of making mistakes, stifling innovation and experimentation.
Reduced Risk-Taking	To maintain the 'excellent' image, organizations may avoid taking calculated risks, limiting growth opportunities.
Burnout	The constant pressure to excel can lead to employee burnout and decreased job satisfaction.
Loss of Focus	An excessive emphasis on perfection can divert attention from core business objectives.
Stagnation	Over-reliance on past successes can prevent the organization from adapting to changing market conditions.

Few Remedial Measures: 

• Embrace a Growth Mindset: Encourage a culture where learning from failures is valued and mistakes are seen as opportunities for improvement.
• Set Realistic Goals: Establish achievable targets that align with the organization's overall strategy.
• Prioritize Customer Satisfaction: Focus on delivering value to customers rather than solely pursuing internal metrics of excellence.
• Empower Employees: Delegate authority and encourage employee ownership of projects to foster innovation.
• Celebrate Progress: Recognize and reward small wins to maintain motivation and momentum.
• Continuous Learning: Invest in employee development and training to build a culture of continuous improvement.

By implementing these measures, organizations can strike a balance between striving for excellence and maintaining agility and adaptability.

 

Remember, perfection is an unattainable ideal. It's more important to foster a culture of continuous improvement and focus on delivering value to customers.

Paradox of excellence, made famous through the book by David Mosby and Michael Weismann, talks about slight deviation in excellent performance of companies leading to poor customer retention, and hence links to poor performance.

 

I will like to look at this statement slightly differently and will explain why it makes sense, highlighting that it is not the paradox, in fact it is the nature of customer requirement.

 

How many of you have heard about the famous Kano's model? We understand "dis-satisfiers" as the bare minimum features that we expect from a product/ service or a brand. Sometimes, it is sum-total of the features expected from product/ service & brand. As soon as we become mindful of this concept; and add the biased human mindset; it can be easy to understand that the bar is higher for bigger reputed brands, but smaller for non reputed ones.

 

Similar bias exists not only from companies, products, services; but can easily be extended to teams, people etc.

 

 

So, in summary to "What is Paradox of Excellence", we have understood from an angle of biases and Kano's model that why it exists.

 

 

Let us look at how it affects companies performance?

- This is easy to check too. Less repeat customers imply effectivey plateau growth, which can only mean all bad things for a company. The company needs to hence look into mitigating its effects.

 

Let us try to answer, how can companies mitigate its adverse effects? 

- Try to consistent in performance & offering of a product & service

- Try to go over and beyond and do your best

- Couple with delighters to ensure you are forgiven or ignored for the missing dis-satisfier.

 

The Paradox of excellence refers to the phenomenon where high achievers or successful organizations face unintended negative consequences due to their own success. These paradox occurs because as individuals or organizations became more proficient and achieve higher standards, the expectations of their performance also arise. This can led to a situation where excellence is taken for granted and any deviation from perfection is noticed and criticized more harshly than before.

 

Adverse effects on the excellence journey of an organization.

 

1. Increased pressure and stress : High expectations can create immense pressure on employees and teams to continuously perform at peak levels, leading to burnout and reduced morale.
2. Fear of failure : The fear of not meeting elevated expectations can suffocate creativity and innovation, as employees may avoid taking risks that could lead to mistakes
3. Undervalued contributions : Consistently high performance can lead to the undervaluation of ongoing efforts, as excellence becomes the norm and exceptional achievements are no longer recognised or rewarded
4. Resource strain : Maintaining high standards can strain resources, including time, money and personnel, potentially leading to inefficiencies or diminishing returns
5. Negative Feedback loop : Criticism for not meeting high expectations can create a negative feedback loop, where employees or resources feel unappreciated and disengaged further effecting performance

 

Remedial Measures :

 

1. Manage Expectations : Clearly communicate realistic expectations and celebrate incremental achievements. This help in recognizing and appreciating ongoing efforts and progress.
2. Encourage Innovation and Risk-Taking : Foster a culture that values creativity and is tolerant of mistakes. Encourage employees to experiment and learn from failures without fear of severe repercussions
3. Promote work life balance or life work balance : Implement policies and practices that support a healthy life work balance to prevent burnout and maintain employee well being
4. Regularly re-evaluate goals : Periodically reassess and adjust goals and benchmarks to ensure they remain relevant and attainable, preventing complacency and promoting continuous improvement
5. Rewards and Recognition : Develop a culture for rewards and recognition system that acknowledges both individual and the team contributions. Recognise not just outcomes but also efforts and improvements
6. Open Communication : Maintain open communication culture b/w employees and leadership. Encourage feedback and actively listen to concerns, creative a supportive and inclusive env    environment
7. Develop Resilience : Build organization resilience by fostering adaptability and flexibility. Equip employees with the skills and mindset to navigate challenges and changes effectively

 

By addressing the adverse effect of the ‘Paradox of Excellence’ and implementing these remedial measures, organizations can sustain their high performance while ensuring a healthy, innovative and supportive work environment.

Definition of 'Excellence' :   As per Oxford dictionary the meaning is "Quality of being very good"

 

Definition of Paradox:

 A Cambridge dictionary meaning of that is "Seeming impossible or difficult to understand because of containing two opposite facts or characteristics. 

 

What is about this "Paradox of Excellence":

“The Paradox of Excellence”, is a book written by David Mosby and Michael Weissman.

 

The general norm is that when an organization provides a superior performance/service to its customers, there is supposed to be a high customer loyalty and an increased brand value. But the reality often is different: The superior performance/service of the organization is taken for granted and undervalued by the marketplace. This makes the organization cold-faced many a times and can make their reputation damaged and can bring down their business to a loss as well  

 

Adverse Effects (due to the 'Paradox of Excellence' phenomenon) on the excellence journey of an Organization:

 

1. Customer (over)Expectation not met: 
Human beings go by beliefs. If an organization is providing consistently a good performance/service, people will go with that belief and expect that to be the same always, irrespective of the situation. Does it sound odd ? No. Think of Kano Model where "Delighters" category goes to Basic(Must have) expectation,  over a period of time. For instance, you are being served a juice every 2 hrs on a flight from Chennai to San-Francisco journey, say on two occasions. Next time when you board the same flight operator, and go from Chennai to Dubai (which is probably say approx. 1/4th of the travel time to Chennai-San-Francisco distance) you would still expect multiple juices to be given to you!! That is because of the high expectation you had, as prior experience with the flight operator. There could be such experiences other passengers might have with that same flight operator. Not every time organizations can necessarily meet the customer expectations  

 

2. Reputation Loss/Brand Image impacted:

Understanding customer expectation is the key. If that is not understand then organization will have its brand/reputation impacted. An organization may not be even aware of the expectation that its customers have on it. That can be much more damaging. 

 

3. Loss of Customer Confidence/Customer Dissatisfaction:

Delaying to meet the customer expectation or not understanding that, can result in customer dissatisfaction and customer getting frustrated and loosing confidence and shying away from the organization's services/products 

 

4. Potential Employee Disengagement:  

When employees are not engaged properly, there can be a slow but steady decline of performance/service degradation.  

Remedial Measures:
1. Retrospect:
 Do a retrospection as where the gap is and see if there is any trend if there are multiple feedbacks. Try to understand the nature of the problem and include right 
stakeholders to discuss on the issues observed. Come out with relevant action item(s) and implement them as per priority with a SMART approach

 

2. Employee Engagement: 
A key stakeholder in any organization is people (the workforce) who can shape or make a product!! If employees can be satisfied, then every change is possible!! 
Happiness index of the employees is therefore a key metric for the success of an organization.  Therefore getting the employee feedback/ideas/challenges.. can help 
in overcoming challenges.
     

3. Continuous Improvement:
Finding ways to improve the existing product/processes that have helped in achieving the customer satisfaction(during the past). Experiment with some ideas, inspect if that works and adapt your system/process accordingly.  

 

Example: While telecasting Cricket, the technology got improved day-by-day and year-by-year. As more and more cameras got placed at various vantage points on the ground, the expectation amongst the fans(the 'customers' for the game) grew up for the technology to show right-decisions to help the standing umpires. There was a challenge when close run-outs and faint edges came into picture, which those cameras could not pick, in several cases. So the Cricket governing body (ICC) latched on to a new technology - Decision Referral System(DRS),that helped the third umpire to provide a more closer look and improved the right decisions on close runouts and faint edges. The expectation only increased from the customers(fans). Still few other challenges remained. Getting prompt LBW and how about hair-line decision of runouts.  So, the ball tracking technology came to decide whether a batter is out or not. Then for hair-line runouts, as soon as a bail lifts from the stumps, the LED light would display. So these technologies ensured that right decisions always given to the maximum hilt. This is what the fans wanted!! With continuous improvement, the ICC has been able to address their customers' expectations and therefore sustain its performance/service.  

 

4. Customer Feedback:
 1. Getting feedback from customer after a service is done is always a good option to understand customer pain points, emotions, mindset
 2. For Key customers, focused interviews, face-to-face meet.. can be better
 
Having the customer feedback can provide great insights for the betterment of the service/performance provided by the organization, to its customers 

 

5. Knowing USP:
An organization has to see how it can further leverage its Unique Selling Proposition(USP). Accordingly it has to harness its strength. It also should try to see how to expand its business on that area to see if that can put a positive spin on addressing customer expectation.  

 

Conclusion:

As a Six Sigma BB consultant, this can be a perfect situation to help an organization facing this sort of challenges. Understand the issues. Decide upon if the problem is perennial (if the organization is suffering for quite some time). If this current process/setup cannot be improved upon, then go for DMADV/DMADOV, Else DMAIC. As we seen, it is essential to understand the implicit and explicit expectations of the customers and address them at the earliest possible time to avoid the ignominy of not meeting customer expectation

Reference: https://scottpublicrelations.com/the-paradox-of-excellence-high-performance-low-respect/

Many times, smart, ambitious professionals are less productive and satisfied than they could be. Due to fear of showing weakness they stick to tasks which they are already good at rather than taking any risk and trying to innovative approach.  

 

This situation is Called Paradox of excellence.  

 

Adverse effects on Paradox of excellence: -  

After being in this Paradox for longer periods, individual & Teams 

• Stop taking new initiative 

• Do not seek help as they do not want to show their weakness. 

• A collaborative approach is not taken by them.  

• They become stagnant in the organization. 

• They Miss opportunity of growth and improvement. 

• Continuously striving to perfection and burnout 

Due to these innovations are stopped in their area, their team feels stagnant, no growth happens, and no improvements are seen around them. Overall company growth journey in business excellence perspective totally stop in such team and departments. 

 

 

 

Remedial measure on Paradox of excellence: -  

An organization that can provide goods and services at a compelling value only may stagnate and die unless it is able to harvest and exploit its creative and innovative energies  

 

To address Paradox of excellence overall system to be establish within the organization: - 

• To promote a culture where Growth and innovative minds are appreciated, rather than perfection 

• Encourages teams to take risks and look at failure as learning opportunities. 

• Create an environment in the organization such teams feel safe to express and ask for help without any fear. 

• Rewards and recognize the innovative ideas so everyone can be motivated to take calculated risks. 

• Regular coaching, mentoring, training, and help must be provided to develop skills and growth mindset. 

 

The Paradox of Excellence is the behavior in a organization where in the standards are set very high, where the employee exceptional performances are presumed as a normalcy and the exceptional efforts go unrecognized. This eventually result in lesser employee satisfaction and the toxic culture of the organization. 

 

The paradox of Excellence has got adverse effects on the organization which include-

1. Culture of the organization -The organization culture will get affected badly as the employee morale will get deteriorated. The paradox of excellence will eventually degrade the morale as it seems to the employees that their contributions are no longer valued, hence there is no point in pushing themselves to the extremes for achieving the organization goals. 

2. Employee Attrition Rate -The employee attrition rate will go high as the employee satisfaction will go down and the company will have adverse impact on this.

3. The Long Term Losses -As the ESAT gets affected badly, the increase in the attrition rate will lead to the loss of talent in the organization which will hamper the efficiencies and the on-going projects gets delayed/stranded leading to less revenue generations and subsequently the profits in the organization.

 

There are some remedial measures in order to eliminate/mitigate the paradox of Excellence in the organization are:

1. Kaizen Councils -This is a platform wherein the Manufacturing/Service industry can utilize this platform to represent the smaller improvements, initiatives taken during the month and the senior management can recognize the newer and innovative ideas and appreciate the efforts taken by the employees which boosts the morale of the employees and in parallel create a competitive spirit which internally benefits the organization. 

 

2. R&R -The monthly R&R programs can be included in the organizations to keep a track on the employee performances and the same to be appreciated by means of Star, Performer of the Month awards.

 

3. SPOT Award -The SPOT appreciations are really need of the hours as this helps in the better involvement of most of the team members in ideation techniques. This helps in taking out the paradox of the excellence as the SPOT recognition of the significant achievement will uplift employee morale. 

 

4. SANWAD -SANWAD (Healthy Discussion) can be an active employee participation to understand what is going good, what are the hurdles being faced, similar questionaries that can help in arriving a score probably the engagement score which eventually help in taking out the paradox of excellence. There are various 3rd parties which conduct such surveys anonymously which helps in getting a genuine feedback.

 

5. Monetary Recognition -Monetary benefits are the best for boosting the employees morale and secondly this takes out the paradox rather creates a competitive spirit among the employees. 

             

Equally interesting answers to an interesting question. Loved reading all the answers, specially where the connection to Kano model is made.

The best answer has been given by R Rajesh.