The standard for excellence is not simply financial or operational results. It includes creating replicable and reliable processes for execution, and fostering collaborative and respectful relationships among all parties involved in producing those results.

Writing recently in the New York Times ("It May Be a Good Job, but Is It 'Good Work'?", 11/16/08), Daniel Goleman explored ideas about what makes work fulfilling recently championed by Howard Gardner, William Damon and Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi. Three factors come into play — excellence, ethics, and engagement.

Excellence involves successfully performing against a high standard. Jobs that afford opportunities to be continually challenged also provide the chance for people to grow in their work. Most of what we learn at work, we learn on the job, whereas formal learning programs and coaching lay the groundwork for experiential learning or help to reinforce that experience. Having a clear sense of excellence in performance and a path for growing to that standard are crucial retention factors for top performing employees. Paired with that is an evident commitment by the organization's leadership to address problem performance. Creating an environment where people can regularly excel is perhaps the most significant process improvement standard to which an organization can aspire.

Working in a way that is aligned with your ethics has a couple of dimensions. At a minimum, it involves operating according to standards consistent with your personal ethics. Compliance and audit standards generally attempt to inspect these standards into the work. The more powerful approach is creating aligned cultural norms in the organization about what is acceptable practice and fostering an environment where potential ethical issues can be raised and resolved quickly and fairly. On a more profound level, aligning your work with your ethics can prompt you to choose a profession that aligns with your own conception of "good work," or put another way, that provides regular opportunities to engage in "right action." In her book, The High Purpose Company, Christine Arena examined the critical role that alignment around a larger purpose has in driving outstanding organizational performance across multiple dimensions, not just making the numbers. This is a more expansive view of the results that truly matter.

Engagement certainly is affected by the degree to which employees feel challenged to pursue excellence and perceive their efforts to be aligned with their own ethics. But, engagement also means the extent to which you find joy in your work. This emotional factor may seem nebulous, but a moment’s reflection on those times in your life when you’ve been filled with joy may provide powerful clues to what you may be missing at work. Work that is meaningful may be part of that equation. So, also, may be a regular sense of accomplishment. Likely, the quality of the relationships you have cultivated will be a significant factor. The Gallup organization's work on employee surveys showed that the presence of a best friend at work was one of the dozen most important factors in the engagement of high performing employees.

Doing well takes on a broader meaning in this context. The standard for excellence is not simply financial or operational results. It includes creating replicable and reliable processes for execution, and fostering collaborative and respectful relationships among all parties involved in producing those results. Interaction Associates defines success as a balance of results, process, and relationship satisfaction. And in a world where we face continual challenge and change, the personal compass of finding work that is "good work" can be essential to how we achieve a triple bottom line that includes people, profit, and the planet.