Don’t Settle for the Ordinary

Hello everybody, Dennis Engelbrecht with Digging Deeper.

Today I'm going to talk about the idea of really holding high standards, and more so don't settle for the ordinary. So why would you settle for the ordinary? Well, it's interesting. I think our jobs are hard, so whether you're a superintendent, or
a project manager, or a foreman, or even the business owner, sometimes we just get worn down. We get worn down. We go out, and we see the performance on a job, and it's not exactly the way we'd expect it, but it's going to be a real pain in
the butt to have to go back and criticize somebody, show somebody, make them take it down, start it over, those sorts of things. It's hard to do that. And if you're seeing this all day long, or in all parts of your business, it's easy to get worn down and settle, settle for the way that people are doing it because there's less conflict that way, right? There's less conflict and less work if you just settle for what it is.

But in the end, what you end up being is dissatisfied, dissatisfied with your work, don't have the amount of pride you could have. Your people don't have the amount of pride you could have. And in fact, you might actually not maintain your customers, your reputation, all those sorts of things. So, if you don't settle for the ordinary, and you maintain high standards, how do you do that? First of all, with yourself to try to keep those standards in front of you and in front of people? But then, how do you avoid getting beaten down, and letting things sort of fall gradually or fall suddenly? And I think that's really a very difficult thing. I think high performance simply just simply doesn't come without obstacles.

So, if you want to be a high performer and you want to have a high performing company, or a high performing job, your job is really to overcome those obstacles. It's to find a way to make everyone else try to live to that higher standard. First
of all, of course you got to make sure they understand what the standard is, because a lot of people going back to one of our prior blogs they just don't know what they don't know. So, you've got to communicate the standards. And on a job site you hopefully do that very early. As a trade or a worker is starting to perform, get them early. Tell them, "This is not up to standard. This is what our standard is." Do mock ups, things like that to show what that standard is, show what a finished room should look like, or a window opening, or closure rather, should look like. You've got to communicate those standards if you want people to live to them.

The other thing you have to be careful of though, and one of those fine lines is, you can't come across as holier than thou, that your standards are ridiculous, and you keep everybody else sort of at a lower place, you put yourself above them. That doesn't get results either. So, you have to be careful as you communicate those high standards, that it's a we goal, this is something we need to strive for, and everybody is in it together. If you put yourself above others, they're not going
to buy into those standards.

But in the end, having high standards for yourself and not compromising on those does help to show others the way. You just have to be careful to communicate those in a humble way. I like to think of it as trying to invite others to join in your quest for these high standards, and making it be an invitation to come, let's do this together, as opposed to something you sort of pushed out. So again, the point of today's talk is don't settle for the ordinary, and good luck with that out on your job sites.

Thanks a lot, Dennis Engelbrecht, Digging Deeper.