The Pretence of Excellence

One of the most exhausting features of institutional life, whether in education, corporate structures, or the softer machinery of public engagement, is the relentless insistence that everything we do is in pursuit of “excellence”.

It is printed on letterheads, murmured in team briefings, and embedded in mission statements. Everyone claims to be striving for it, committed to it, or somehow elevating it. The language is always self-congratulatory, regardless of whether the work matches the claim.

And yet, more often than not, excellence is neither clearly defined nor seriously expected. The word is simply trotted out as a kind of polite fiction. A slogan, not a standard.

What I have come to observe, over and over, is that systems no longer reward excellence. They reward smoothness, compliance, and just enough presentability to avoid drawing criticism. In many places, simply staying in the building long enough is mistaken for merit.

There are, of course, exceptions. But they are increasingly rare. In most organisations, there is a growing divide between those who recite the language of standards and those who actually uphold them. Often it is the quiet, competent ones doing the real work. The teacher who stays late to write meaningful reports. The junior colleague who rechecks figures to protect a senior from embarrassment. The freelance contributor who fixes what should already have been fixed.

Meanwhile, the polished few drift upwards. They receive courtesies, titles, and deference. They are rarely challenged, not because they are unusually gifted, but because they are agreeable in the right way. They understand what to say, when to smile, and how to thank people for decisions that ought never to have been made.

I increasingly ask myself who these systems are designed to serve.

Because from what I can see, it is often the most competent who are the most overburdened. They are asked to do more, fix more, and cover more, and they do. Until they cannot. Or until they leave.

I have seen organisations boast about their commitment to rigour while quietly discouraging those who question low standards. I have watched good people eased out not because they were wrong, but because they made others feel uncomfortable by being right too often. I have heard people say, “he is such a nice person,” as if that ought to excuse decisions that are lazy or professionally indefensible.

It is not just frustrating. It is corrosive.

I say this not out of bitterness, but from experience. I have worked in enough systems to know what happens when standards are only decorative. I have watched talented colleagues walk away. I have been one of them.

When excellence becomes a word we decorate ourselves with, rather than a discipline we live by, it is not only the quality of the work that declines. It is the spirit behind it. You cannot ask people to give their best when mediocrity is accepted and rewarded all around them.

I still believe in standards. I still believe that good work matters. I simply no longer believe that the people at the top always do.