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Key Highlights
Excellence vs. perfection: Perfection is an unattainable ideal; excellence is the highest quality you can achieve given your constraints - time, people, resources, and contextThe foundation of excellent teams: Three pillars - permission to hold each other accountable to shared standards, constant environment of feedback, and low personal ego where success is collective not individualThe 2-3 rule: You can't be excellent at everything - choose what you're uniquely equipped to do better than others, focus there intensely, and be content with good enough elsewhereValues hierarchy matters: When excellence conflicts with speed (or other values), leaders must explicitly clarify which supersedes - if excellence wins, you do fewer things at higher quality rather than more things fasterExcellence is both achievement and pursuit: You can achieve excellent work (Olympic medals, perfect dishes), but the best performers are always hungry for more - it's simultaneously a destination and a journeyNotable Quotes
"Excellence is the consistent pursuit of the highest quality you can achieve within a given set of constraints. Perfection is an ideal abstraction - it's not truly attainable in any pursuit.""Excellence is real. We can see it. The question is how do we get there ourselves and build that pursuit among our teams?""The baseline table stakes is: excellence is what we are about. There's a stated agreement amongst the team that we want to be excellent.""Excellence itself, for most people, is motivating. When I'm on an excellent team surrounded by excellent people, I want to show up for them in a way that I'm carrying my own weight.""Were the Chicago Bulls perfect? No. It's very obvious they weren't. But excellence is not perfection - it's the pursuit of the highest level of quality given the constraints."Featured Speakers
Matt Coyne is a Managing Director at CRA | Admired Leadership based in Chicago, specializing in strategic communication, leadership, and increasingly AI integration for organizational excellence. With nearly a decade of experience helping senior leaders define and achieve excellence in practice (not just theory), he brings a unique perspective shaped by studying excellence across domains from Michelin-starred kitchens to Olympic athletes. Mallory Stacey is a Managing Director at CRA | Admired Leadership, an executive coach and leadership advisor who specializes in helping leaders and teams navigate the tension between high standards and sustainability. A parent of young children who understands firsthand the challenge of pursuing excellence across competing priorities and domains. Guest host filling in for regular host Wes Bender.Resources Mentioned
Field Note: "In Search of Excellence" (embodied excellence concept)
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