4Ps of Professional Excellence in the Organization
"Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." -- Aristotle
Professionals act to excel. Be it budgeting, recruiting, producing, or selling, craving for excellence has become the buzzword across the corporate corridors. However, professional excellence isn't achieved by everyone. We see professionals dejected about failures, cribbing about, "You know what! That guy knows how to palm grease the boss; I don't know." "That girl, you know! Boss is pleased with her because she smiles at him every now and then; that's not my type." Many such discussions flood our office spaces and off-office places like cafeterias and pubs everyday. However, after seeing the professionaldom for over 25 years, I think these are merely naive excuses, not rational justifications. The reasons behind claiming this isn't manifold but four-folds. :) This blog-post is an attempt in this regard--to juxtapose theory with practice in order to reveal the four secrets that enables people to excel in professions.
Every profession in principle has two intertwined elements: the professional and the environment. The professional refers to the person in charge of the situation, i.e., the role; and the environment encompasses everything else, namely, the workgroup, department, organization, community, customers, suppliers, investors, and so on. Thus, professional success is not about personal success but, paraphrasing Charles Darwin (2009[1859]), can be defined as the following: "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change [arising from the interplay between a species and her/his environment]." In other words, coping with change is vital for survival. However, we don't live the organizational life to merely survive, but to thrive or excel. In this regard, to adapting to changes isn't all about changing everything but also getting anchored with somethings too--especially with respect to four things--which defy changes in time and space. :)
We live in a time marked by both a dynamic world and a dynamic self. The world changes with meteoric speed due to the umpteen discoveries and inventions that are taking place everyday. Various experiences and the learning thereof change us too. In the process, it is argued that our response to change is the key to succeed in the present professionaldom (e.g., Gill, 2002). However, there are some invariant aspects of the professional life. They do not depend on where or when we work. For example, do we change our love for our customers? No. Do we change our Monday office clock-in timings from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.? No. (Night-shift gals/guys, excuse me, please.) Do we change being polite toward the old and differently able people in elevators? No. Do we just move on, without cleaning the place after partying? No. (If you like to litter the office space, you aren't my type.) Or for that matter, do we wear socks over shoes while getting ready for office? No, no, no. :) Similarly, We don't quit a company abruptly if they struggle to get a replacement. We don't whimsically shift from coding to marketing if coding is our forte. We don't make fun of a colleague if s/he is ruminating over a pink-slip. We don't heartlessly give a cold shoulder to a customer if s/he brings a product complaint to our notice. We don't make a supplier run for her/his outstanding if we are doing well financially. We, don't, right? Yes, yes, yes. :) Hence, there are some aspects of professional life that remain constant amidst change.
While pondering over the lives of many great corporate giants, I have come across four attributes that are key to professional excellence. These are the following 4Ps:
- Passion,
- Performance,
- Pledge, and
- Propriety.
Next, I elaborate them using theoretical concepts and practitioners' viewpoints and discuss how we employing them can inculcate a habit hovering around professional excellence.
Passion stands for "an intense desire or enthusiasm for something." Passion creates interest within an individual (Vallerand, 2008). Interest mirrors those pursuits we enjoy, which when followed can create successful careers for us. Stories from Aristotle to Leonardo Da Vinci, from Jamsetji N. Tata to Richard Branson, real life examples abound regarding people following their passion to become successful in their pursuits. This is because our passion about something create our identity in the organizational life, which is the first stepping stone to succeed. The legendary Steve Jobs, the co-founder, and ex chairman and CEO of Apple Inc., while advising people about the importance of the True North of professional life, said, "Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition." This implies that by following someone, we would only become 'another someone', not 'our real self'. Achieving professional excellence therefore is underscored by being passionate about one's own self, and following it steadfastly.
Performance refers to "a task or operation seen in terms of how successfully it is performed." In other words, performance is the measure of one's passion. Performance is the measure of how much one is really pursuing the 'right' kind of passion (Vallerand et al., 2007). Its importance in the context of professional life was succinctly captured by Peter Drucker, the father of modern day management, who often said, "You can't manage what you can't measure." Thus, performance levels help to both manage present performance and improve it further. In this regard, it is argued that performance can also used as benchmarks to motivate individuals to better past performance levels (Nicholls, 1984). In case of the state of present organizations that are underlined by specializations and customizations, hence complementary skills led core expertise of professionals, and not generalizations, it is pertinent to remember Henry Ford's quote: "Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success." Thus, along with individual performance, one must not lose sight of the group/team productivity.
Propriety indicates "conformity to conventionally accepted standards of behavior or morals." It is said that higher performance should make us ethical (e.g., Zadek, 1998). This is akin to the juxtaposition of rights with duties. Thus successfully enjoying one's rights through vocational choice and success should lead to duties undertaken with propriety, and pride, that helps one's stakeholders. In the context of profession, ethical attitude toward vocation is a positive attribute that can give long-term success. In this regard Warren Buffet's quote impresses the most: "I want employees to ask themselves whether they are willing to have any contemplated act appear the next day on the front page of their local paper — to be read by their spouses, children and friends — with the reporting done by an informed and critical reporter." This is the hallmark of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s Code of Business Conduct and Ethics.
Pledge is described as to "commit (a person or organization) by a solemn promise." It can be manifested in the form of commitment or loyalty. In the professional sphere, individuals can commit to the institution that provides them with opportunities to donate their time and talent, realize their potentials, and flourish in the process. Propriety to vocation can get reinforced when it is directed toward the source, i.e., parent organization (e.g., Verquer, Beehr, & Wagner, 2003). I call this as pledge to the organization. An example here is Natarajan Chandrasekaran, the incumbent chairman of Tata Sons. Recollecting the wisdom of his father whom he was fond of, Chandrasekaran has said, "Every time I wanted to do something ... [my father] would ask if I am committing myself for the long term or was it for the short term. He would say whenever you have to do a one-off thing; you don't have to think much. Long-term commitments have to be thought through." History is the witness regarding loyalty as the key to his elevation to the helm of Tata in 2017.
I propose a lexicographic ordering to the above 4Ps of professional excellence. That is, the 4Ps should adhere to the following order: passion --> performance --> propriety --> pledge. For to perform well one should pursue his passion at first (what one truly is like and likes). Secondly, propriety should be the obvious outcome of higher performance; as said above, success should make one more responsible. And, as a professional, to whom one's propriety or ethical conduct should first direct toward? This in turn brings to the pledge or commitment toward the organization (which gives a professional the opportunity to flourish). To summarize, we can state that professional excellence is a function of one's 4Ps, viz. one's passion for the profession, performance in the group, propriety toward her/his vocation, and pledge to the organization.
Professional excellence = f (Passion, Performance, Propriety, Pledge)
These attributes are individually relevant to create professional excellence. An absence of any one of those 4Ps can jeopardize professional excellence. Hence, I posit a multiplicative relationship between them. I finally offer a conceptualization about how professional excellence is related to passion, performance, propriety, and pledge.
Professional excellence (PE) = Passion (Pa) * Performance (Pe) * Propriety (Pr) * Pledge (Pl)
Now a question may arise, "What if I don't excel professionally even after adhering to these 4Ps of professional excellence in that order (i.e., PE = PaPePrPl)?" To answer this, I would take you to nearly two and half millennia backward, when a wise man named Socrates lived. :) He had said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." To his wise saying, I would like add the following: "In addition to logic and reasons for examination, life must be based on facts and examples." The logic and reasons are yours and the facts and examples are as mentioned above. Now, it's your turn to excel the excellent. Do you see the relevance of the 4Ps of professional excellence in your organizational life? Can you create a habit out of it? :)
References:
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (n.d.). Code of business conduct and ethics. Retrieved from http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/govern/ethics.pdf
Business Standard (n.d.). Top 10 quotes of Tata Sons Chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran. Retrieved from https://www.business-standard.com/multimedia/photo-gallery/economy/top-10-quotes-of-tata-sons-chairman-natarajan-chandrasekaran-3804.htm
Darwin, C. (2009[1858]). On the origin of species, William Bynum (Ed.). London: Penguin.
Gill, R. (2002). Change management--or change leadership? Journal of Change Management, 3, 307-318.
Huffington Post (Dec 05, 2011). Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address: ‘Your Time Is Limited, So Don’t Waste It Living Someone Else’s Life’. Retrieved from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/05/steve-jobs-stanford-commencement-address_n_997301.html
Nicholls, J. G. (1984). Achievement motivation: Conceptions of ability, subjective experience, task choice, and performance. Psychological Review, 91, 328-346.
Oxford Living Dictionaries (n.d.). Passion. Retrieved from https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/passion
Oxford Living Dictionaries (n.d.). Performance. Retrieved from https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/performance
Oxford Living Dictionaries (n.d.). Pledge. Retrieved from https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/pledge
Oxford Living Dictionaries (n.d.). Propriety. Retrieved from https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/propriety
Vallerand, R. J. (2008). On the psychology of passion: In search of what makes people's lives most worth living. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne, 49, 1-13.
Vallerand R. J., Salvy, S-J., Mageau, G. A., Elliot, A. J., Denis, P. L., Grouzet, F. M. E., & Blanchard, C. (2007). On the role of passion in performance. Journal of Personality, 75, 505-534.
Verquer, M. L., Beehr, T. A., & Wagner, S. H. (2003). A meta-analysis of relations between person-organization fit and work attitudes. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 63, 473-489.
Zadek, S. (1998). Balancing Performance, Ethics, and Accountability. Journal of Business Ethics, 17, 1421-1442.
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