Excellence Requires Indifference

It's Think about it Thursday. Have you thought about how indifference can be the pathway to excellence? Most of us think of indifference negatively. Perhaps there's another way to look at it.

Excellence

I’m a big fan of @Tom Peters. Since his early work “In Search of Excellence”, Tom has focused relentlessly on the topic of excellence. He is continuously probing into the sources, methods, attitudes, habits… of what excellence really looks like. I would sum up his premise as this: Most American businesses are focused on quarterly revenue and profits and too few have the courage to invest in excellence before they start seeing growth, revenue and profits. If I got Tom’s premise right, I wholeheartedly agree. The purpose of this post is not to explore what excellence is (Tom has done an amazingly thorough and entertaining job on this), but instead to ask you to consider that your understanding of excellence might be only partially informed.

Indifference

I believe that in spite the thoughtful work on the topic of excellence, Tom (and others) are missing a key component of excellence that is often left off. In fact, it is almost always considered an opposite - indifference. If asked you for a base definition of indifference, you might say that it means to “not care”. ?But I think that you might also add that it has a negative connotation. I mostly agree that this represents a generally agreed definition of indifference. In this definition, a person consumed with indifference might muddle along their day not caring about anything.

However, I think that there is more to the word. We have the power to be indifferent to things that are unimportant, distracting or irrelevant. That’s where the power of indifference comes in and how it fits together with excellence.

Why Excellence requires Indifference

Here’s my point: Excellence requires us to be hyper-focused on what matters to achieve it. My definition of indifference is - to choose to put all non-essential things aside. In this way we can direct our full attention to driving excellence into this moment. Perhaps some examples at work might help.

Indifference at Work

What distracts us at work?

• Someone at work annoys the heck out of you? Maybe you have a bit of a chip on your shoulder when you are required to join their Zoom meeting.
• You are a bit angry about that snub from you boss and hold a grudge, coloring all your judgments of them going forward.
• Company gossip churns at work about a layoff. You spend the day speculating with co-workers on whether you be let go?

I think you may relate to these or similar circumstances. If distraction is the enemy of focus and focus is essential to excellence, indifference is the key. Be indifferent to all things that distract you from a focus on excellent work, whatever that means for you and your role. Be indifferent to anger, jealousy, ambitious and gossiping co-workers and even to what others think about you. Choose focus. Choose excellence. Reject distraction and choose indifference. Then bring it home to your relationship, the things you love and focus on excellence in all aspects of your life.

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