Brian Strobel - Pursuing Excellence: A Values-Based, Systems Approach to Help Companies Become More Resilient

First published 2021

by Routledge

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and by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2021 Taylor & Francis

The right of Brian Strobel to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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ISBN: 978-0-367-90304-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-61777-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-02406-4 (ebk)

Typeset in Minion
by codeMantra

For Chiaumey. Thank you for your understanding and forgiveness
over the many precious hours I spent away from you while
finishing this work. You remain my musethe reason and
cause for everything good that I have come to cherish.

In 1964, in the case of Jacobellis v. Ohio before the Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Potter Stewart was asked to describe the threshold test for obscenity. Stewart wrote that he could not define or adequately describe that which is obscene, but he knew it when he saw it. The same might be said of excellence.

Its a powerful word. It is a word that can elate us, cause us to celebrate others, motivate us to press further, stiffen our spine when we need greater resolve, or help us rally around a cause greater than ourselves. Whether a parent, student, athlete, employee, employer, or a business leader, we all want to achieve excellence and to help others achieve their excellence.

Yet it is a word that is difficult to defineoften just a notion. But like Justice Stewart, we know it when we see it.

We see it in sports when the underdog comes from behind to win. We see it in our children when they work hard to achieve personal greatness. We see it in our leaders who are often at their best when things are at their very worst, as were all too familiar with now in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Brian Strobel knows excellence when he sees it. From his time as an officer in the US Marine Corps, a high-performance organization that relentlessly pursues excellence, Strobel was immersed in a culture of excellence every day. As a result, he probably recognizes excellence more by its absence than by its presence.

In Pursuing Excellence, Strobel walks us through what excellence looks like; its values and beliefs, culture, leadership and strategy, systems and structures, marketspace, people, processes, products, and the customer experience. He is not too shy to make a special call-out for the need to achieve sustainable profit. His construct for this book serves as a series of waypoints for the journey on which Strobel will take the reader, walking through each on its own and as a part of the whole. And he shares his definition of excellence that serves as the lighthouse throughout the book.

Readers will gain an understanding that Pursuing Excellence is a book about organizational design: how to get a company to operate better as a values-based organization; not just vertical optimizations but horizontal integrations as well. It will become unmistakable that becoming a high-performance organization starts with high-performance individuals working in high-performance teams and having a culture of leadership in which people can thrive. And through which their goals can be realized.

Although the subject matter is serious, Strobel takes the reader on the journey by sharing stories from his life and examples from his experiences as a Marine and as a corporate leader, sharing instances where there was excellence and also where there was not. This makes Pursuing Excellence an easy, enjoyable, and relatable read.

This book doesnt provide any detailed formula. Strobel recognizes that companies operate under a variety of circumstances, with different priorities, and work from different places in their business cycle. Instead, he provides a roadmap that guides you through the things that are important, regardless of where you are, and leaves it up to you to fill in the blanks, allowing the reader to decide on the details.

If we want to become the best versions of ourselves and be part of organizations that are the best versions of themselves in our new world, then we need to be pursuing excellence.

Joseph F. Paris Jr.
Founder, Operational Excellence Society
Author of State of Readiness

I developed the concept for this work six years ago. I completed most of the first draft just before the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic. While this books ideas have nothing to do with our current situation, they may also have everything to do with it.

Just like 9/11 changed the world, were experiencing another event that will forever change our core beliefs, but on a much larger scale. This book doesnt focus on that critical issue, but it does provide ideas for our companies to operate more efficiently and become more resilient. And it does so while helping ensure they focus on the right things. Our current state will only exasperate this need.

Far more people than I can list here have contributed to this effort. Im indebted to those authors, thinkers, and organizational leaders who developed concepts that Ive leveraged and transformed to convey the ideas presented in this work. Ive attempted to deliver truths through building upon these earlier discoveries and coalescing them into this singular idea of Operational Excellence.

As many of my concepts leverage from others, Ive directly cited those instances where the original words best communicate the ideas under discussion. Some models in the text are my personal development. Others are derivatives of common models Ive transformed into Operational Excellence applications. When leveraging from others, Ive given the original thinkers full credit.

Special credit is due to Robert Quinn and John Rohrbaugh for the Competing Values Framework (CVF) that has become foundational to my thinking and the ideas of this book.

The definitions for excellence and organizational excellence are reprinted with permission from ASQ, www.asq.org. All rights reserved. No further distribution allowed without permission.

My CVF and Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) figures are adapted with permission from Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture by Kim S. Cameron and Robert Quinn, published by Jossey-Bass. Copyright 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

The definition of culture is from Organizational Culture and Leadership by Edgar H. Schein, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and is used with permission. Copyright 2017 by Edgar H. Schein. All rights reserved.

The ISO Quality Management Principles ISO are excerpted from ISOs Quality Management Principles with permission of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) on behalf of the International Organization for Standardization. All rights reserved.

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