As Vivek Ramaswamy warned: “Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.”
Even Pope Leo XIV has recently announced “Never give in to mediocrity”
Most people tend to think of it as passive – soft, sluggish, and ‘middling’ – just ‘average.’ No real harm to anyone.
They’re wrong.
Mediocrity is active. It recruits. It builds coalitions. It spreads. Like an aggressive virus.
Stage 1: Localized Outbreak
Infection begins small. First one person starts cutting corners. Turning in half-finished work, missing deadlines. Instead of accountability, they get cover. “Everyone’s busy.”
Times are challenging.” “At least they’re trying.”
Stage 2: Pre-Epidemic Phase
Then, two people are cutting corners. Then four. Deadlines are kicked into the long grass. Excuses for poor performance pile up. Soon, the people who aren’t cutting corners become the problem. “Why work so hard? You make us look bad.” High performers start to feel the pressure to dial it back.
Peer pressure forces talent to conform. Productivity drops, and “good enough” becomes the new norm. The best employees leave not because they’re unhappy but because they’re unwelcome. The mediocre remain, entrenching themselves deeper.
Stage 3: Epidemic
Mediocrity shifts into aggressive infection, spreading from office to office, floor to floor, building to building. Underperformers form cliques of resentment, sabotaging the ones left who care. They lobby for shorter hours, “flexible” schedules, and less accountability. HR hires based on anything but merit.
Performance reviews are gutted to avoid “unfair pressure.” The organization now rewards conformity and work avoidance. The mediocre dominate. Bureaucracy is weaponized, removing all qualitative assessments and shielding underperformers with litigation threats. The mediocre cover for each other, and middle managers conceal incompetence.
The result? Death of the entire organization. Once it starts spreading, companies can fail to stop it because they treat it like a management problem instead of a cultural one.
Excellence doesn’t happen by accident. It happens by design – when you have clear standards, clear consequences, and lead leaders brave enough to defend both.
Mediocrity doesn’t kill teams quickly. It kills them quietly. And the graveyard of business is full of companies that died being reasonable.
