ACHIEVING EXCELLENCE
Excellence is the possession of good quality in an unusual degree. Our God is a God of excellence, all the deeds of God are excellent and it is recorded everywhere [Gen 1:3]. As his ambassadors, we must represent him accurately. We will completely misrepresent him if what we do is not excellent. Excellence is doing things right. But before we consider how to do it right, let’s ensure we are doing the right thing. Excellence in the wrong thing still spells failure.

YOU NEED TO DEFINE YOUR ASSIGNMENT
You cannot just be efficient for efficiency’s sake. We must also be effective. Efficiency is doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things. Defining your assignment is the starting point for you to achieve excellence. State clearly the vision of your organization. This defines the limit of the areas in which to achieve excellence in your organization.

MINDSETS TO DEAL WITH
You have to choose between quality and quantity. This is not true because the more quality you have, the more quantity you attract. This is because the more you do things better, the more you will be patronized.
You must have large amount of money before you can achieve excellence. Rather you need excellence to attract a large amount of money. If you will improve on the quality of what you are doing, your customers will increase this translates into more money. Don’t ask “what will this cost us?” Rather ask “ what will it cost us if we don’t do it?”.

WHY EXCELLENCE IS A MUST
Things are moving around us everyday. An organization that is outdated in its methods cannot be relevant to a contemporary world. If you are still making use of your old manual typewriter when you’re suppose to be doing your work with great speed on a system it may mire a lot of things. We must endeavor to up-date ourselves with new technologies.

Excellence motivates especially in an underdeveloped environment like ours. Our organizations should be places of inspiration. What is that unique thing your organization has that can inspire other people?.
Striving for excellence shows people that we are serious about our assignment i.e. what we are doing and encourages them to want to be part of it. No matter how small a thing looks, if you have invested quality thoughts in it, people tend to appreciate and identify with it. Great works are a result of deep thoughts.

Like begets like. Excellence attracts good quality human, financial and material resources to the organization. For example if your bank is known for excellent customer service, within five minutes a customer has been attended to, people tend to flock the more to such banks, same goes for supermarkets, salons, various companies.
Life is progressive and not stagnant. We have to jog to maintain our position. If we remain stagnant, we risk failure. There is no pride in failure. We must appreciate excellence wherever it is found. Excellence attracts. We must strive for it. This is one of the keys to success in life.

An excellence oriented organization must look for ways to continually improve quality in services offered, events and its facilities.

AREAS OF IMPROVEMENTS
Communication- i.e. Advert materials [must portray excellence].
Customer service- when a service is good, one person tells a maximum of 5 people. But when the services are bad, one person tells 20 people. Now only 4% comes back to complain but the remaining 96% speak with their feet.

Creativity- Staff must keep churning in ideas about how to do things in a better way. Staff trainings- staff should be exposed to world class improvement programmes for better performance, it is vital to keep learning.

Facilities- Organization facilities reveal what we value and reflect our self-image. Therefore, the excellence- oriented organization must thrive for excellence in he following areas:
The painting of the facilities and landscaping of the environment. Keep the plants and grasses well trimmed and all directional signs freshly painted.

The environment is well lit, it has comfortable seating arrangements and the temperature is well managed [cooling system]. The rest rooms are clean. Visitors may forget what you say but not the memory of a foul-smelling restroom.
The appearance of staff say a lot about your organization’s priority for excellence. The excellence-oriented organization invests money in what people can see. Human beings are generally motivated and affected by what they see.

Excellence is more of a process than a product, a journey, not a destination. We should not make excellence a one- time goal and improvement in quality a culture at all levels. Excellence will be a by-product as time goes on. The key is never to stop learning. When you stop learning, you stop growing. Excellence should not be a one-time thing. It must be upgraded from time to time.

You will succeed!