Every great org starts the same way: a handful of people with conviction, urgency, and the energy of a shared mission. The best ones are driven by clarity of purpose, crisp principles, and a team that believes in building something that matters.
But then… something changes. Not all at once. Slowly. Subtly. A mood creeps in.
That’s the ghost of mediocrity.
It doesn’t smash the windows or light anything on fire. It just takes the shine off everything. It dulls your edges. It makes okay feel fine. It feeds off ambiguity, comfort, and leadership that’s afraid to rock the boat.
You don’t need a reorg to get mediocre. You just have to stop being intentional.
Symptoms of the Ghost
The ghost shows up in ways that are easy to dismiss—until it’s too late:
- Meetings feel “meh.” – Nobody’s pushing. Nobody’s fighting for great. People show up, nod along, then leave without making decisions or holding each other accountable.
- Decisions drift – They don’t get made, or they get made by accident. Or every decision is treated the same. No clarity, no urgency.
- Everything feels urgent—but nothing actually moves – The team is reactive, not proactive. “We’re so busy” becomes an excuse for not doing the important work.
- Ownership is fuzzy. – “That’s not my job” creeps in. Everyone’s responsible, so no one is.
- The bar silently lowers – “It works” starts replacing “It’s awesome.” “That’s how we’ve always done it” replaces “How hard could it be?” or “What would it take?”
- Management theater replaces leadership – Managers manage—but they’re not leading. More on that below.
- The fun is gone – And no one even notices.
How to Exorcise the Ghost of Mediocrity
This isn’t about a pep talk or a new process. It’s about getting back to what made you great in the first place. Here’s how:
1. Re-ground in mission—and principles
Your mission is your “why,” but your principles are your “how.” If you haven’t written down your team’s tenets, do it now. If you haven’t reviewed them in the last 30 days, do it tomorrow. If you don’t have mechanisms that re-enforce them, build some. Use them to evaluate decisions. Ask your team: Which tenet did we ignore here? If you don’t, people will make up their own.
See: Tenets
2. Use prioritization to create clarity, not chaos
If everything’s a P1, nothing is. This is where the Something Needs to Starve model comes in: stack rank your team’s priorities 1-N. If N is greater than 3 or 4, stop working on anything greater than 4. Don’t let your team confuse activity with progress. Make the tradeoffs explicit and be okay letting things slip on purpose.
See: Something Needs to Starve, 90% of the Decisions You Make Don’t Matter
3. Slow down to move fast
If your team is stuck in a loop of urgency—always reacting, never leading—it’s time to pause on purpose. That means pulling your leadership team out for a full offsite. Three days. No laptops. Facilitated.
Yes, it feels like you don’t have time. That’s the point.
You need time to step back, reset shared understanding of mission and principles, and make real decisions about what not to do. That clarity will save you months of wheel-spinning.
I do this kind of work with teams. If you’re feeling the drift—or just want to raise the bar—grab time on my office hours and let’s talk.
4. Default to action
Create a culture that moves. Replace weekly status meetings with fast daily standups: What did you ship? What’s blocking you?
And above all: dates, dates, dates.
Make it unacceptable to say “I’m working on X” without saying “…and I’ll be done by [date].” Every owned initiative needs both a human and a deadline. No fuzzy timelines. No passive verbs. Ambiguity is the ghost’s playground.
See: Path To Green, The 5Ps: Achieving Focus in Any Endeavor
5. Give one person the wheel
Every major initiative needs a Single-Threaded Leader. That person owns the outcome. They’re not a figurehead. They don’t need a committee to move. If something doesn’t have a name next to it, it won’t happen. If it doesn’t have a date, it doesn’t exist.
6. Raise the bar—relentlessly
Don’t just ask “Is it done?” Ask, Would we want to do it this way again? Do post-mortems where you grade the work against your tenets. Look at failure modes—especially when customers are impacted—and engineer the sh*t out of them. Don’t just tolerate bugs or outages. Treat them like opportunities to show your standards in action.
Get in the habit of saying “this isn’t good enough” without shame or drama. High standards aren’t toxic—unclear standards are.
7. Management Theater
This is where the O in CBTO breaks down. You see managers who are “handling the team,” keeping the lights on—but not raising the bar. They hire for convenience, avoid hard conversations, and optimize for stability over excellence.
That’s how the ghost gets in the door.
Great managers lead. They actively curate the team, give feedback that stings and helps, and never treat people management like a side project. If your managers aren’t coaching, developing, and inspiring, your org will drift—quietly, slowly, and dangerously.
See: People Management Is Not a Hobby
See also: CBTO
8. Make it fun again
Fun doesn’t mean ping-pong tables. It means people laughing in meetings because they care. It means a team that celebrates wins and tells stories that live on. It means making space for joy—not as a luxury, but as a signal that you’re building something real.
The ghost of mediocrity doesn’t show up with a name tag. It whispers. It erodes. And if you don’t actively push back, you’ll wake up in an org that looks fine on paper but feels hollow inside.
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