Does your workplace espouse or profess a culture of excellence? If not, what makes it meaningful/worthwhile to you?

Years ago, I worked in a very large organization that preached the “excellence” gospel daily. The organization participated in state and national quality improvement programs such as the National Malcolm Baldrige Award and the state program that mimicked it.

My current workplace which has a really wonderful mission completely lacks this culture. It’s mostly about “good enough” and keeping the mistakes within tolerances that won’t sink the ship. It’s a small company with a single owner/manager and one or more silent partners. The owner/manager is a “no news is good news” kind of guy, so there’s not too much hands on correction or direction from him other than maintaining the status quo, which includes some persistent but fixable gaps in customer service, for example, that no one seems interested in fixing.

After a while, I used to roll my eyes at the excellence propaganda from my former employer, but now I find myself wishing I had some of that here.

Is your workplace on the excellence bandwagon? If not, does it bother you? What do you focus on instead?