Blah blah....

I am working with a non-profit in town for their major annual fundraiser. It's my third year and is usually lots of fun. I am the chair of my committee and doled out the responsibility of creating an invitation to the event to a new committee member transplanted from Arizona. The member said she and her spouse did graphical stuff......so I figured, why not?

I should've known when I sent a logo to her in Photoshop format and she didn't recognize it that we were in trouble. I received a comp this morning in two parts. (1) The front panel of the invite....in a Word document. and (2) the back panel....in Excel.

Are you kidding me?

Now comes my biggest challenge. How do I tell her this is totally unacceptable and useless without hurting her feelings? I 'm not sure how, but through this whole thing I am noticing something that is all too common.

People thrive on mediocrity.

How do people who perform so poorly in their fields survive? How can a woman actually think she is in the graphic design industry and send a Word document? How can executives and managers across the world exhibit less intelligence than their subordinates daily and still maintain their positions?

Maybe the rest of us are too scared of getting canned to say anything, or maybe we like feeling needed, or maybe we don't want to hurt their feelings. Whatever the reason, it seems like in our silence we end up right where we started....mediocrity.