Item #20: The Rule is Still 100% Percent

Below is the very first Guest Post on Curated, and the 'guest' of honour is no less than my very own Dad, Stuart McCulloch. Hope you enjoy.

The Rule is Still 100% Percent










It has been predicted that approximately 90 percent of all corporate dollars in the future will be spent on people.

It is predictions like this that add to the already present concerns for improved employee productivity. These concerns have elicited responses from the pundits of motivational theory from the experts on time management and a large number of other individuals and organizations who have all directed their attentions to improving employee attitudes, work patterns, and inevitably performance and productivity.

The effort suggests that employee productivity can, in fact, be increased. If this is so, then the present day worker cannot be applying himself fully to a one hundred percent effort.

What standards of employee performance should we expect? It appears that there are an increasing number of elements in the work force who are bent on maximizing their rewards and benefits for a minimal amount of a day’s work. Hopefully our standards of performance have not eroded to the point that mediocrity can be considered acceptable.

Perhaps we have failed to educate today’s graduates to realize that the school grading scheme changes within the work environment. Whereas a “C” grade was considered passable in the educational environment, nothing less than an “A” or 100 percent can be acceptable in the workplace. For example, it would be inappropriate for a truck driver to tell his boss that he successfully avoided 80% of other trucks on the road. How confident would we be in the care of a doctor who only aimed for an 80% survival rate for patients he had operated on?

The grading scheme is the same today as it was years ago and if anything, the performance level we should now demand of ourselves is probably higher. The truck driver has to contend with more crowded road conditions and faster speeds and is faced with an ever-reducing tolerance for errors on the road. The power of our computer systems that support physicians in the operating room can produce far-reaching and sometimes catastrophic results from a small programming error.

In today’s business we have to demand 100%. The goal is not impossible. In school, with the proper application of self to the work required, an “A” or 100% was possible. How many times, however, did we apply ourselves and how hard did we try?

It is easily recognizable that if the astronauts are not 100% accurate, they would miss the earth on their return from space. How hard are we all trying to achieve 100%?