Do you have an “Elle-evator” in your office?
An “Elle-evator” is the person who isn’t satisfied with sloppiness, who constantly looks for ways to improve, and pushes themselves and everyone around them up to the next level. They elevate the way everyone else performs, requiring that everyone around them raise their standard of excellence.
In my office, my wife and business partner Elle has impeccable standards. She is the ultimate “Elle-evator,” and her desire to improve everything has had a huge positive impact on my business, helping me to produce highly polished products and services.
Her standards are so clear, that when my team is working on a project, everyone knows to evaluate it to decide whether it’s “finished” or it “needs to be ‘Elle-evated.’”
But here’s the amazing thing about having really high and very clear standards: it makes managing a team so much easier. Half baked projects don’t even make it out of the kitchen, and everyone knows that there is a certain level of quality and excellence that is expected in everything we produce.
Do you have clear standards of excellence in your organization or company?
Here’s how you can find out: pick up an inferior, sloppy product and pass it around, such as a brochure, a proposal, or a logo design.
If everyone in your office knows that it “needs to be ‘Elle-evated’” to become a high-quality finished product, then you can rest assured that your standards of excellence are clear.
If everyone shrugs and says, “Looks good to me,” then you might need to “Elle-evate” the standards that you’re communicating to your team.
It’s awesome to have high standards, but unless every single person in your organization knows exactly what excellence looks like, things are going to fall through the cracks, and I guarantee that you will produce sub-par products from time to time.
If you want to deliver consistent, amazing products and services, then you need to develop a sixth sense of true excellence in your employees. They need to have their own “this needs to be ‘Elle-evated’” sensors, and they need to feel empowered to speak up about anything and everything that doesn’t pass the test.
Who is going to be the “Elle-evator” for your company? Remember that this person will need to have the personality for it — they can’t be afraid of being honest and direct.
Once you find your “Elle-evator,” make sure to celebrate them, and let them know how much they’re contributing to the team. This will empower your “Elle-evator” to stick to their standards, even when facing opposition from the people who think it’s “good enough.”
Where are you setting the bar for your company? More importantly, could your employees tell me where you’ve set it?
*Image courtesy Steve Snodgrass
As a speaker and author, Curtis Zimmerman has impacted over one million people with his life-changing messages and award-winning programs. Curtis is an expert at transforming organizations by inspiring individuals to live their lives at performance level.
Want to be inspired? Check out his podcast The Next 24 Hours.
