Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about mediocrity.
To be fair that’s mainly come from the standard of football I’ve been watching this season (see my post from late last year) but it’s also been on my mind when it comes to leading high performing engineering teams.
One thing I learned early in my career as a result of getting burned from getting it so wrong is to constantly gauge the bar of your middle performers.
I believe that most orgs know who their high and low performers are. But, they know less about their people in the middle — the people who do a good enough job, most of the time. It is also my belief that “the middle” is where your performance bar is set, and where it is held — and if you’re not regularly gauging how that group is doing and raising your standards, then you’re at risk of building a mediocre organisation.
And yes, that’s fine in some places. But not in high growth or high ambition places. There’s a place for good enough — but it’s generally not in ambitious, high performing orgs 🥸
🆙 Amp it up
I’m writing this post because this has been on my mind recently and last week on a flight to the US I re-read “Amp It Up” by Frank Slootman. Sure enough, I enjoyed reading it again and I re-discovered one of my favourite references on mediocrity. From my notes:
“Mediocrity — if you want a great company, you can’t give out free passes for mediocrity… Good enough is never good enough.”
I think that alone is worth reading the book for. If you haven’t read it and you’re a leader of teams, regardless of the industry you work in — you should. Raise the bar. Sharpen your focus. And make sure you’re building for great, not just good enough.