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High personal standards aren't enough for organizational excellence. You've got to be intolerant of low standards in others. . . . If you accommodate questionable practices in others who touch your organization, you risk soiling its reputation. Anybody whose hands aren't clean can get the place dirty.

Price Pritchett

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Price Pritchett
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: January 1
Practice
Standards
Questionable
High
Organization
Accommodate
Others
Clean
Practices
Place
Aren
Excellence
Hands
Anybody
Dirty
Enough
Whose
Reputation
Personal
Lows
Intolerant
Risk
Touch
Organizational

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But when we get enough people who don't care, and who don't accept personal responsibility for high ethical standards, our organization gets the M disease. Mediocrity. Anybody in the place can be a carrier. By the same token, every individual can carry the cure: the ethics of excellence.
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Too much attention on problems kills our faith in possibilities.
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Who is this vague they we blame for so many of our problems? They is the obscure party we use as our whipping boy to camouflage the fact that we - you and I and other specific human beings just like us - have to start doing things differently. They can't fix anything. We can.
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The only way we can develop muscle is through regular exercise. As soon as we stop stretching and working toward higher ethics, our standards start to sag. The muscle gets soft, and instead of excellence we have to settle for mediocrity. Maybe something even worse.
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You can't put someone else in charge of your morals. Ethics is a personal discipline.
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We've got to start thinking of school as a lifelong process. That's the only way we'll keep abreast and be able to share in the wealth of the new knowledge society.
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As consumers we get more demanding all the time. We want better quality. We want it faster. And cheaper. Plus, we want more choices. Whoever comes along that can satisfy all these 'wants' gets our business.
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Excellence is a process, not just an outcome. Sure, we have to hold out for high standards in the products or services we provide. The goods must be more than good enough. But so must our approach - you know, our methodology, the way we do business and deal with people. How could the ends be considered excellent if we can't be proud of the mea
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The world behaves differently when I take action to go after what I want.
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No sense being pessimistic. Wouldn't work anyway.
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You carve out the organization's character through your daily choices. You shape its conscience as you exercise your own.
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Everybody makes honest mistakes, but there's no such thing as an honest cover-up.
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Optimism is a much more enabling mindset than hard-core realism, and it's far superior to pessimism...[because] Hope helps move us in the direction of our goals and ambitions.
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So let your deepest desires direct your aim. Set your sights far above the 'reasonable' target. The power of purpose is profound only if you have a desire that stirs the heart.
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Live according to the ethics of excellence, and you can always stand proud. Pride - not vanity, but dignity and self-respect - should carry a lot of weight in helping you make decisions. Let pride help you decide.
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