We recently, held the best event naseba has hosted in our 9 year history – Women in Leadership Asia.
The first lady of Malaysia opened and attended the summit.

The event doubled revenue from the previous edition, but the success I am referring to isn’t  financial.

Our COO of Asia, Adam Fletcher and Seda who was also working on the event did everything possible to make the event perfect.

Sophie told Fabien, Nic and I how Adam focused on every tiny detail to ensure the event was perfect – and because he was so focused on perfection – and demanded perfection the other people working with him all raised the quality of their work.

As she talked about Adam’s ethic and great workmanship, I thought about John Galt. 

Last week, Adam was in Dubai  for his monthly review.

And I watched him spend his entire saturday afternoon working on something in the Dubai office which had nothing to do with him; yet he spent his entire last day in Dubai working on getting something done perfectly. 

From my experience, most people would have outsourced it to someone else to do for them, and then they would have spent the day doing something for themselves…but not Adam.  He wanted it to be perfect.

Saturday night,  I had my monthly dinner with Keith “Sidd” Brown, so I invited Adam to join us, and we went to my favorite restaurant in Dubai, Nobu.   

Over dinner, we all discussed “the value of pride” …

Adam told Sidd a story — a memory of his from our previous company where Adam was a sales manager working for me in Monaco.

Each Tuesday, the “10 week average” for all the offices in the company was sent out to the General Managers of each office. 

Although we had only 15 employees, our office was always number 2 in the company … well ahead of several other offices like London, New York, Sydney, etc which all had many more sales people, and more products on sale than our small, yet focused and hyper-performing office.

Everyone on our team focused and worked hard to make sure we were (always) number one in Europe and Asia …
The entire office was made up with the type of people you want standing next to you in a fight.

No other office in the company was as competitive as the Monaco office.

The beginning of each week, everyone on the team would talk about the “10 week average” … and we all looked forward to seeing our figure and where we stood on the list.

(number one was impossible to beat because it was Chicago – and the office was the biggest in the company with 350+ employees and more products on sale) 

It wasn’t money that got everyone excited about where our office stood ….

It was pride.

And that “Pride” is what drove us to work hard. 

We wanted to be the best. 
We wanted to win.  

Everyone was proud and that “pride” is what helped us all to succeed.

There was no “half-ass” in that office – if there was, then he or she was removed immediately.

But can you teach someone to have pride?  Or at the very least, can you teach someone the value of pride?

So many “half assed” people in our world today. 
So many people doing the bare minimum of what they have to do. 

If you are going to do a job, then do it well.

No matter what the task or job you do, do it to the absolute best of your ability.

But….

Can you teach people to want to do something to the best of their ability — or maybe I should re-phrase this:
can you teach people to want to be great?