Challenge the Ordinary

Chapter FourExcellence Defines Results

While many critics might suggest that modern Western culture has lost touch with excellence, the facts tell a different story. The winners in the organizational survival game—recently redefined by the economic downturn—have reinvented the standards for us and let us know what to expect.

In the early 1920s, a revolutionary cultural movement, known as Surrealism, began with the goal of resolving the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality. Surrealist works feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions, and non sequitur. One noted Surrealist, René Magritte, painted a series of pipes entitled “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” (This is not a pipe). Magritte wanted those who viewed his painting ...