When I think of excellence, many thoughts go rushing through my mind. I recall growing up hearing words such as, “do it right the first time”, “it takes less time to do it right then to redo it” and my mother will remember saying this to me… “VICKIE! do it over!”
Sigh… if the biggest thing I had to worry about today was getting the sheet on my bed folded correctly in the corners or making sure the dishes were squeeky clean, oh what a easy life this would be. Its funny how our life experiences fold together to make us who we are today. I have grown up (some would disagree) and I am very quality minded.
One of my very first jobs was a summer job working at a manufacturing plant. My job was to test the pressure it took to close a door on a disk drive. This involved bumping the door closed with a hand held pressure reader, watching the needle and adjusting a screw until the pressure was correct then putting a drop of bright marking paint on the screw to show it was tested and sending the drive down the line to the next person. As you might imagine, I was so bored. I knew I had reached the bottom of my life(at 18). I expressed to my superviser that I wanted a job that was important, one that I could feel good about, he smiled and sat me down and explained to me the importance of my job. I realized that it doesn’t matter how unimportant your job may seem. Anything and everything I do is worth doing to the best of my ability. Albeit, while some days my abilty seems to be greatly demonishied, I still make the effort to do my best.
My final thought on this would be… do your best and be proud of it. There is no job too small and so unimportant that we should do it with less effort for excellence.
