Your specific role and responsibility is to “raise the bar.”  It’s not sufficient to meet the goals with quality or to create sustainable results, to not leave bodies in the road and completely alienate your peers.  You are judged on exceeding all expectations all the time.  This is a performance culture.

It’s also the goal of arete.  A concept the Victorians translated and transliterated as “virtue” or “excellence.”  So often arete is indexed to morality, which for the sexuality of some Ancient Greeks was a deliberate conflation by the translators.  As arete was virtue and virtue was a moral prerogative, so too we must judge what’s best in society as moral impediments to overcome to strictures to always meet.  What happens when this is translocated to business?

“What did you do to drive this result?  What did you do to deserve this success?”  These are the kinds of questions we were getting asked in our training seminar.

One interesting item I discovered only later about Bar Raisers — people chosen and trained to scrutinize applicants during job interviews — is that they are never vetted again.  I’m curious and sceptical about how they are chosen, since they are then able to judge superior value so long as they are employed with the company.  Anyone with a veto makes me uncomfortable, particularly when it’s granted for life.