The Allure of Mehxcellence
How good teams fall into the trap of good enough
Medicority is excellence in the eyes of medicore people.
- Josephy Joubert, French Moralist & Essayist
The enemy of greatness isn’t failure - it’s mediocrity.
The thing about mediocrity is that no one strives for it. By and large, no one wants to be just okay at what they spend their time on. Rather, we invite mediocrity when our standards decline. We’re often unaware, as it’s not a definitive decision but rather the result of progressively conflating our effort with results. What’s considered meh before looks excellent today, resulting in a culture of mehxcellence.
In effect, the mehxcellent team ignores the nuance of magnitude, treating each step forward like a leap. Incrementalism looks like innovation. Victory may not be declared, but it’s just a matter of time.
The mehxcellent team thrives in an environment in which self-serving narratives are tolerated. Like the frog in boiling water, the group's members never realize that the story has shifted from what we accomplish to what we attempt.
One way to think about this is the mehxcellent team falls prey to the fundamental attribution error (FAE). In short, FAE speaks to our tendency to judge others based on their results and ourselves based on intentions. This means we tend to judge the driver who cuts us off on the freeway more harshly (“what an unaware a-hole!”) than we do ourselves in similar situations (“sorry, I didn’t see the lane merge sign!”). The reality is both matters - you can be a well-intentioned and shitty driver, and it’s ultimately up to you to reconcile those two states.
When we over-emphasize the inputs to our work and discount the outputs, “good enough” becomes synonymous with “good.” If we succeed, it’s because we’re amazing. If we fail, it’s because of insurmountable headwinds…but look at what we accomplished despite the universe’s attempt to conspire against us!
That’s not to say there’s no effort behind it; mediocre work requires more effort than great work does. Instead, the action is less focused, less defined, less discerning.
I’ve noticed three tell-tale signs of the mehxcellent team:
Mehticulousness - the tendency to spend more time documenting actions than evaluating them.
Mehdoza Line - bringing on average or below-average hires who will feed the self-serving narratives.
Mehssiah Complex - we are the best, even if no one else sees it.
Mehticulousness
When faced with poor results, a mehxcellent team will add steps to their existing workflow rather than shifting how they work.
The thinking goes something like this: we’re smart people close to solving something hard, so achieving our goal is a matter of tightening the bolts versus replacing the engine.
To their credit, the mehxcellent team will follow best practices and appear to be doing all of the right things. They will follow the operational cadence of high-performing teams - weekly op mechs, driver trees, and business reviews. While the construct is the same, the substance will differ. Whereas the excellent team will focus on the results of what they did, the mehxcellent team will focus on what happened to them. It’s reporting the weather versus reacting to it. Sure, the thunderstorm ruined the picnic, but what were the weather forecasts over the past week?
All of the ingredients are there, but the recipe is off. This mehticulousness will look like we’re building new muscle, whereas, in reality, we’re over-taxing existing ones. More meetings, more documentation, and more initiatives create an abundance of work rather than an abundance of fortune. The team requires a new approach, a new leader, or both to stop the downward spiral.
Of those three options, solely replacing the leader rarely works. From afar, what appears to be a people problem (“the leader wasn’t up to the challenge”) is a systems problem (“the team isn’t working on the right things at the right urgency”). A new leader can solve the latter issue, but it requires a special person to overcome a system that feeds off of mediocrity.
This leads us to our next challenge - hiring.
The Mehdoza Line
The Mendoza Line represents the absolute minimum batting average to be considered competent at the Major League level in baseball. At work, the Mehdoza Line represents the minimum you expect for an employee at that level.
As teams grow, their standards tend to fall. It’s harder to be discerning about who you hire when you have one hundred open positions than when you have one. There comes a point where you’ll accept someone who could do the job and seems nice enough. They check all of the boxes. This is when we approach the Mehdoza Line.
The problem with this approach is that hiring to check the box assumes the box is stagnant. In our fast-paced world, this rarely plays out, so by the time your new employee starts, they’re already holding you back. Check-the-box employees look great when everything is going well but fall short when the situation evolves. When this happens, expect to hear more about what happened to them versus what they did.
For leaders/executives, hiring at the Mehdoza Line is an even larger problem. Leaders should be force multipliers - adding one person to get 10x the results only works if that person can tap into the potential of each employee and the team as a whole. Meh leaders can run the playbook but get stuck when the go-to routes no longer work. Great leaders adjust the playbook for the players on both sides to win the game.
Excellent teams bring in employees that can collectively challenge each other, raising performance. Mehxcellent teams set the bar at the lowest common denominator, capping the upside of potential superstars and comforting the stragglers.
The organization teeters on a cliff when you have too many leaders at the Mehdoza Line. You either rebalance, edging off the cliff towards results. Or you keep with the status quo, praising everyone’s efforts all the way down.
Mehssiah Complex
Eventually, a team has been so steeped in mediocrity that the bar for greatness is lowered to something they can attain. Any progress towards a goal is celebrated, even if it’s only one step of a mile-long journey. This incrementalism of comparing ourselves to ourselves - just 1% better every day - becomes so engrossing that we never realize how far along the competitors are.
“We are in a class of our own,” they’ll say. “No one can catch us.” And they’re right - few will chase after a sinking ship.
Throughout history, there are anecdotes of how companies become so focused on their strength that they lose their foothold in the market without even realizing it. Blockbuster doubled down on investing in its in-store experience despite months of work to build a strong online streaming competitor to Netflix. Blackberry resisted touch screens because the CEO believed most people preferred a keyboard. Quibi failed to offer their programming on anything larger than a phone screen despite the impact the pandemic had on day-to-day commutes.
When all news is good news - mediocrity has won.
Resisting Meh
If it were easy, every team would be great. The reality is most teams will go through ebbs and flows of good and great, with occasional trists with mediocre. The trick is to recognize as you slide down the scale and address immediately. Otherwise, like the boiling frog, you won’t realize you’ve accepted mehxcellence in lieu of excellence.
Ultimately, every op mech that fails to address the results of what actions we have taken and/or the expected results of actions we will take is merely theater. Slides can be read - actions need to be debated.
Hiring is challenging regardless of the level or volume. While it’s not easy, follow Derek Sivers’ framework of “if it’s not a hell yes, then it’s a no.”
Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics. Ultimately, we have to evaluate ourselves collectively on the results and individually on the inputs. If the former doesn’t match the latter, systemic change is needed.