You can be Good or Great
Carter: (to Dr. Anspaugh) I can be a competent surgeon. I can learn the techniques, the mechanics, but I'll never be a great surgeon. Dr. Anspaugh, I can be a great doctor; a doctor who spends time with his patients, who's there for them. I'm good at it. Really good.
The above quote is from an old episode of ER where Dr. Carter tries to explain to his boss why he wants to switch specialities, stay at the same hospital, but switch specialties. In the context of the episode, Carter spends all his time trying to corner Anspaugh on the issue, Anspaugh naturally avoiding him. His response to the above is something akin to Carter being so young but already knowing what he wants out of life.
I don't know how, or when, but this quote has been bouncing around in my head for the last 6 months... so much so that I am trying to find the episode and watch it again in its entirety.
Look at your current career, are you doing a good job? I've come to realize that someone who even goes above and beyond can still be doing a good job. These aren't necessarily the guys who punch in and out on the clock - these are the people who know what to do and go and do it, stay late, get on the plane, whatever it takes. But deep down they know they could do better.
So the question becomes why aren't they doing what they know will make them great at their job?
For me, it always comes back to passion, you have to believe in what you are doing, you have to see the value of what you are doing. Its the passion that people have in their careers that drive them towards always doing their best and always raising the bar for themselves. Its not so much as seeing the light on the train at the end of the tunnel, its more about hopping onto the train as it races by you. As a society, we tend to lean toward the monetary in encouraging the move from good to great but it isn't that easy and in most cases it is rarely the case (sure paying someone their just due always helps) but it isn't the driving force behind the change. If a guy is already staying late on his own to crush some bugs and 3 weeks later you offer him a monetary incentive to finish the rest, he's not going to finish the rest because of the incentive, he's going to finish it because he believes in the product and wants to see it done right.
In the above ER episode, Carter leaves his surgical residency and goes back to the ER, he works unpaid for a year and he is great at it.