12 Steps to Excellence: How to Build a Great Team

By C. David Crouch and Stephen M.R. Covey

"Nobody understands the science of excellence like David Crouch."
- Stephen M.R. Covey

Creating excellence is an applied science. Drawing upon the experience of successful teams and their leaders, "12 Steps to Excellence" captures the essence of team excellence in an easy-to-execute method anyone can employ.

Building a great team is a discipline that can be learned. How do you talk about the work you do? What’s the main thing your team is trying to accomplish? What do you value so strongly that you’re not willing to compromise along the way? How do customers define your quality and how do you measure it? Are you and everyone on your team building strong customer relationships? Are you impressing your customer so much that they will voluntarily and passionately talk positively to others about you? Is everyone on your team fully engaged in the work? Are you making positive forward progress? Do you have a viable strategic plan? Are you tapping into the Pareto Principle of Leadership Excellence? Can you measure all of these things?

In his warm and eloquent style, David shows us step-by-step how to build a great team and organization. He gives us the framework, language, and process so that we not only have knowledge and understanding of the steps required, we also have the tools to achieve it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781532083303

C. David Crouch

C. David Crouch is a perpetual student of excellence who serves as a consultant and teacher to leaders in the corporate and social sectors. He earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and a master’s degree in organizational development from Western Carolina University. He is also the author of The Excellent Experience: A Blueprint for Organizational, Team, and Individual Success. He and his wife, Debbie, have five children and six grandchildren and live in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 C. David Crouch.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-5320-8331-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-8594-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-8330-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019916434

iUniverse rev. date: 10/29/2019

Foreword by

Stephen M. R. Covey

New York Times and #1 Wall Street Journal best-selling author of

The Speed of Trust and coauthor of Smart Trust

Excellence is not an act, but a habit.

—Aristotle

Contents

Foreword by Stephen M. R. Covey

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Step 1:     Change Your Language

Step 2:     Define Your Mission

Step 3:     Create an Inspiring Vision

Step 4:     Identify Your Principles

Step 5:     Make Quality Job One

Step 6:     Take Care of the Customer

Step 7:     Take Care of the People

Step 8:     Focus on Progress, Not Perfection

Step 9:     Live Frugally, Spend Rationally

Step 10:   Plan Your Work

Step 11:   Measure Performance

Step 12:   Lead the Way

Bringing It All Together into a Plan

Bibliography

Foreword

Stephen M. R. Covey

Aristotle once observed, We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. How true this is! Not only is excellence a habit; it is also a discipline. Because it is a discipline, it can be learned. And nobody understands the science of excellence—and how to teach it—better than David Crouch.

David is a friend whose character and work I sincerely admire, and I am grateful for this opportunity to share my thoughts and feelings about his remarkable book. As I read it, I was thrilled to discover that his approach to the pursuit of excellence rang resonant chords of truth for me time and time again.

First and foremost, I immediately recognized David’s focus on self-evident, universal principles. By definition, principles withstand the test of time. They are like a lighthouse that provides solid, consistent, accurate direction in the rough seas of today’s tumultuous environment or tomorrow’s next new crisis. Unlike so many of the approaches today that espouse fly-by-your-pants techniques that promise to magically morph your business into the ideal you desire, David’s approach sticks with the tried and tested. He shows that the real search for excellence is a work in progress—and that there are no short-lived bullets to success, no quick-fix agendas, and no magic strategies to achievement.

I was impressed by the simple yet powerful step-by-step approach that David employs as he frames his book’s message. David points to the value of mission, vision, principles, and standards in creating a foundation for excellence. Building on this foundation, he adds five pillars—quality, service, people, growth, and finance—that define the critical elements of excellence in any organization. He shows how each of these pillars is vital to the completion and success of the whole and how true excellence requires vigilant attention to the details—the little things that enable the big things to work effectively together.

For me, the book really took off in its application chapters because they show the guts of David’s model and how it works in differing environments and circumstances. He discusses key components, such as building relationships of trust, learning how to effectively communicate, creating an individual mission, forming a shared vision, and promoting effective leadership on every level. Yet, as he points out, it all comes back to one thing: it is adherence to the standards and principles of the model that makes excellence achievable.

Again, back to Aristotle, excellence is not an act but a habit. In his warm and eloquent style, David shows us how to make excellence a habit in our lives and organizations. He gives us the framework, language, and process so that we not only have knowledge and understanding of the standards required for excellence—we also have the tools to actually achieve it. In sharing an abundance of insightful anecdotes, thoughtful quotes, and practical steps to follow, David takes us by the hand and warmly invites us to undertake the quest for excellence. After reading the book, and knowing the genuine goodness of its author, I am personally excited by the promise—and the achievability—of the quest.

Stephen M. R. Covey

New York Times and #1 Wall Street Journal best-selling author of The Speed of Trust and coauthor of Smart Trust

Acknowledgments

Thanks to my wife, Debbie, who sticks by me and puts up with me no matter what.

Thanks to all my personal business mentors who influenced my excellence philosophy by showing me the way. Among them, Norman Brinker, Tim Crane, Mike Fulenwider, Ed Grady, Rick Mark, Paul Miller, Quint Studer, and Kenneth W. Wood.

Thanks to all my distant business mentors who have taught me so much. Among them, authors Ken Blanchard, Marcus Buckingham, Dale Carnegie, Jim Collins, Stephen R. Covey, Napoleon Hill, John Maxwell, Dr. Dan Petersen, Rick Warren, and Zig Ziglar.

And thanks most of all to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, without whom I would most likely still have one foot on the floor of destitution.

Introduction

Far better it is to dare mighty things to win glorious triumphs even though checkered with failure than to take rank with those poor souls who neither suffer much nor accomplish much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

—Theodore Roosevelt

We all want to be a part of something special—to feel swept away in an adventure that transcends us—to feel like we matter to the world around us in some significant way.

It was the spring of 1975, and I had been selected to play the part of Jesus in our high school production of the Broadway musical Godspell. Our director, Mr. Grady, had a true love for drama and an exceptional ability to get kids to perform at their best. He worked us hard every day after school and built a passion in us to be the best we could be. He required persistent discipline from us as we learned our lines, worked on the dance steps, and stumbled through the scenes. He had to start from scratch with many of us, including me. After all, we were just high school kids, not seasoned actors.

The unique talents and capabilities of the kids in the play, shaped by Mr. Grady’s talented and unique style of leadership and encouragement, combined to create one of those remarkable adventures that transcended each of us. As it was happening, I felt I was part of something really special. Following the opening night of the play, every performance was sold out with standing-room-only crowds. The public responded so positively that we extended its run a full week and took the show on the road for another month.

Godspell was an experience of excellence in my early life. It made a difference in the lives of those it touched, both in the production itself and in the audiences for whom we played. It left a mark on my heart and in my life that I’ll never forget. To this day, it’s still one of the most positive, memorable experiences I’ve had in my sixty-plus years.

Since that spring of 1975, I’ve had many other excellent experiences. Those are the times of my life I remember most. They stand out. They made a difference to me—and others—and gave me a tremendous, wonderful sense of accomplishment about doing something that really mattered.

Throughout my career, I’ve invested countless hours with many people, teams, and organizations in dozens of different industries, researching the concept of excellence and practicing how to build it. I’ve worked as an organizational development consultant to CEOs, executives, leaders, and employees in health care, construction, energy, hospitality, manufacturing, and mining. I’ve also pursued the keys of excellence as they apply to my marriage, family, and life. You could say I’ve become an excellentologist, one who studies excellence and then puts it into practice.

As my journey progressed, I wondered whether there was a framework for excellence that, if followed, would yield the greatest opportunity for success. Is there a process we can apply that really works?

• How can we create an environment that leads to excellence?

• What needs to happen to enable every individual in an organization or team to perform at his or her best?

• Are there principles we can follow that will produce excellence every time?

As I searched for excellence in theory, I also searched for it in practice. I studied some of the great organizations that exist today, including Disney, Ritz-Carlton, Southwest Airlines, Caterpillar, and Toyota. I searched for examples of excellence in their cultures, respecting what they had accomplished and learning from their experiences.

The answers to these questions are the focus of this book. My objective is to provide you with a framework for building excellence that you can apply to your own team and organization. I’ll walk you through this tried-and-true process of creating excellence. I’ll start by building a foundation around language, mission, vision, and principles. Then, we’ll talk about the steps for executing excellence that I call the five pillars of performance—quality, taking care of the customer, taking care of the people, focusing on progress, and spending rationally—that you must consider as you build your team and execute your strategy. I’ll conclude with how to plan your work, measure your progress, and inspire others to join you. Each chapter will discuss a given step at the organizational, team, and individual levels and include a summary at the end with action required to execute that step. The last chapter of the book contains a sample of this system in action.

With these twelve steps, you’ll be able to chart your own path to excellence with your team and organization so you can realize your full potential, capability, and reward. The twelve steps are not just a way to get great results in your business endeavors. They’re much more than that. They will help you create an experience of excellence you will always remember and cherish. Your effort will make a difference in your life and in the lives of others. You’ll get excellent results, you’ll produce higher-quality products and services, you’ll deliver better service to your customers, you’ll create positive, memorable experiences for everyone involved, you’ll grow, and you’ll earn financial rewards.

You’ll also realize that life is more than results, profits, and personal gain. You will discover that it’s an opportunity to matter in the world around you, to have a lasting impact on those you serve, and to leave a legacy of hope and encouragement for others to follow. Excellence creates a life of significance—a life that matters. It’s a noble and worthy pursuit. I hope you’ll make the commitment right now to begin anew in your pursuit of excellence in everything you do, whether personal or professional. If you do, I guarantee that you, and all those around you, will never be the same again. And if you so desire, you too can become an excellentologist.

STEP

1

Change Your Language

The way to change a culture is to change the conversations. If we want to give birth to a workplace that [delivers excellence], we must engage people in radically different ways and invite engagement as the means of creating change. Engagement draws on the power of conversations—the common and conventional talking we do with one another. It is in our conversations that we create and disclose to those around us the future we are pursuing.

—Joel Henning, The Power of Conversations at Work

A language of excellence is comprised of two basic elements: what you say and how you say it. While that may sound simple, only a distinguishable few invest the time to create an intentional language of excellence to infuse their cultures with life, energy, and passion. An instance of ineffective communication is always found in the root cause of every problem. It is that profound realization that has led me to position effective language and communication as the first step to building your culture of excellence. A unique language that describes the culture you are pursuing used in regular daily conversations keeps the life force of excellence pumping. It’s like the blood flowing through the body, nourishing every element. Excellent organizations, excellent leaders, and excellent individual performers have learned how to intentionally communicate with those around them to inspire trust, accountability, and passion. Let’s