Kind Excellence℠
Kindness builds trust; excellence builds success.
Kind Excellence℠ is the proprietary leadership and operating system that guides how Applied Ceramics works and how we treat every person we meet. It was born in 2022, when the three brothers leading our company disagreed during strategic planning over which mattered more, kindness or excellence, and realized the answer was both. Excellence, for us, means pursuing world-class performance in every job, a standard we chase like the horizon and never claim to have reached. Kindness is not the same as being nice; it means treating every person with respect and dignity and caring enough to speak the truth in love, even in difficult conversations. One without the other falls short: excellence without kindness becomes harsh, and kindness without excellence becomes complacent. Many companies are excellent. Many are kind. Few are both. That is our promise.
Kind Excellence℠ is built on twelve behaviors — six Kind (respect for others, honesty, encouragement, humility, courage, and seeking first to understand) and six Excellence (organization, quality of work, high standards, accountability, timeliness, and safety) — and on one simple question we ask whenever the right path is unclear: Did we operate with Kind Excellence? We hire for it, train every new team member in it, measure ourselves against it, and open every meeting with it. The result is a team that attracts people who share our values, disagrees professionally to reach better solutions, and keeps raising its performance. Whether you are a customer, employee, vendor, partner, competitor, or neighbor, Kind Excellence is what you can expect from us in every interaction.
Kind Excellence℠ consulting and leadership training are available to other organizations by request.