When Excellence Threatens a System
On Selection, Safety, and the Cost of Seeing Clearly
Author’s Note
This essay is not written from a place of grievance, nor as an attempt to settle accounts. It emerged from a quieter necessity: the need to see correctly in order to remain well.
Over the past few years, the cumulative strain of professional instability, opaque decision-making, and the emotional labour of translating institutional actions into lived consequences placed unusual pressure not only on my work, but on my home. In such periods, the greatest threat is not adversity itself—it is misinterpretation.
When systems behave incoherently yet insist on their own virtue, individuals often internalise the dissonance. They ask themselves: Am I overreacting? Am I misreading this? Is this my fault? Left unchecked, that self-doubt corrodes judgement, drains vitality, and quietly destabilises family life.
Clarity, in this sense, is not cynicism. It is care.
To see and name a system accurately—its incentives, its fears, its unspoken rules—is to protect one’s sanity and to prevent confusion from being imported into the domestic sphere.
This essay, then, is an act of orientation. It affirms that recognising mediocrity, fragility, and fear-based leadership is not negativity—it is discernment. And discernment is often what allows a family to remain grounded while navigating uncertainty with steadiness rather than panic.
Seeing clearly does not guarantee ease.
But it restores coherence.
And coherence is the soil in which stability grows.
—Baruti KMT-Sisouvong, PhD
For much of my professional life, I held a quiet assumption—perhaps a naively inherited one—that deep knowledge of one’s craft, sustained excellence, integrity, and irrefutable results would ultimately be recognised. Not always immediately, not without friction, but in time. That assumption has been tested over the past few years.
Recently, a short video by executive recruiter Deepali Vyas circulated widely under the banner Corporate Truths. Her assertion was stark and unsettling in its simplicity: promotions are not earned; they are selected. Selected not always on the basis of skill, competence, or impact, but on who makes leadership comfortable, who will not disrupt the system, and who will protect the status quo.
What struck me was not the provocation, but the familiarity.
Selection Over Merit
In theory, institutions—particularly those built on ideals, service, or higher purpose—aspire to reward clarity, effectiveness, and principled leadership. In practice, many drift toward something else: risk minimisation disguised as stewardship.
Selection, in such systems, becomes less about who advances the mission and more about who maintains equilibrium. Who is predictable. Who does not ask inconvenient questions. Who will absorb pressure quietly rather than illuminate its source.
Over the last few years, I have watched decisions unfold that made little sense if evaluated through the lens of outcomes, sustainability, or human impact—but perfect sense when viewed through the lens of comfort preservation. Not comfort for those doing the work, but for those tasked with maintaining appearances.
When Excellence Becomes a Liability
Here is the uncomfortable truth that Vyas names directly: excellence exposes mediocrity. It does so not through accusation, but through contrast. And fragile systems—those reliant on opacity, deference, or unexamined authority—do not reward exposure. They reward safety. Writers such as Ijeoma Oluo have named this dynamic explicitly, documenting how mediocrity—particularly when insulated by historical power—has been protected, normalised, and even elevated, while excellence that disrupts inherited comfort is framed as threat. What appears as individual failure is often structural preservation at work.
Safety looks like:
Compliance framed as cooperation
Silence mistaken for alignment
Stability valued over truth
Short-term calm preferred to long-term coherence
In such environments, those who see clearly—and act accordingly—can become destabilising by default. Not because they are adversarial, but because their presence reveals what the system would rather not confront.
A System Seen Through the Seven Layers
To understand what has unfolded over the past few years, it is not enough to examine individual decisions or isolated outcomes. What is required is a way of seeing how systems drift—and where coherence is first lost.
What ultimately clarified this period for me was not analysing decisions one by one, but understanding how systems lose coherence as they move upward from their foundations. It required pattern recognition.
At the foundation is Pure Consciousness—the ground of stillness, clarity, and unconditioned awareness from which discernment arises. When one is rooted here, perception is not driven by fear or urgency, but by steadiness. This ground is what allows a person to observe a system without immediately collapsing into self-blame or reactivity. It is the quiet reference point that says: something here is misaligned—before the mind rushes to justify or deny it.
From this ground emerge Universal and Natural Laws: coherence, reciprocity, cause and effect. These laws are indifferent to branding, intention, or rhetoric. They govern whether systems are sustainable or brittle.
Every system, no matter how carefully managed, remains subject to deeper laws of coherence, reciprocity, and consequence. When decisions repeatedly violate these principles, instability is not an accident—it is an outcome.
When decisions repeatedly ignore human cost, suppress feedback, or prioritise short-term comfort over long-term integrity, these laws are not suspended—they are merely deferred. Consequence accumulates quietly.
Next comes the Phenomenal World—the realm of observable events. Here, misalignment becomes visible: disrupted livelihoods, unexplained shifts, procedural silences, and decisions whose rationale is never fully articulated. On their own, these events can appear confusing or even random. But viewed in sequence, they form a pattern—one that reflects earlier breaks in coherence rather than isolated misjudgements.
Those events then enter Human Consciousness, where meaning is made. This is often where the greatest damage occurs. Individuals begin to question their own perception. Doubt creeps in. Emotional labour multiplies. The system’s incoherence is internalised as personal inadequacy. Left unexamined, this distortion migrates home—into family life, relationships, and the inner atmosphere of daily living. What began as organisational misalignment becomes psychological strain.
From there, distortion hardens into the Human-Derived World: organisations, hierarchies, policies, and roles. These structures are not neutral. They are crystallised expressions of collective consciousness. When fear governs perception, it governs design. Stability is prioritised over truth. Risk avoidance masquerades as stewardship. Structures meant to serve people instead train people to serve structures.
Over time, these structures are justified through Constructs—stories we tell to preserve legitimacy. Meritocracy. Professionalism. Alignment. Loyalty. These constructs sound principled, but when severed from the lower layers, they become defensive mechanisms.
When constructs designed to reward excellence instead function to preserve comfort, they cease to be guiding principles and become defensive mechanisms.
They explain away exclusion. They reward predictability over competence. They protect mediocrity while insisting it is excellence that is disruptive.
Finally, we arrive at Outcomes—the summit of the system’s arc. These outcomes are never contained. They ripple outward, shaping families, communities, vocations, and futures. They influence who stays, who leaves, who burns out quietly, and who carries forward a deeper clarity into new forms of work and service. In this sense, outcomes are not merely local—they are non-local, extending far beyond the original institution.
Seen this way, what unfolded was not a personal failure or a series of unfortunate events. It was the predictable result of a system ascending without integrity—attempting to manage outcomes at the summit while neglecting the integrity of what lies beneath.
And when excellence threatens such a system, it is not because excellence is disruptive. It is because clarity reveals where coherence has already been lost.
The Cost of Seeing Clearly
The past two and a half years have carried real consequences: professional disruption, financial strain, and the quiet erosion that comes from watching structural decisions ripple outward without direct acknowledgment of their human cost. Not only for me and my family, but for others whose livelihoods and vocations were similarly affected.
What has been most instructive, however, is not the disruption itself, but the response to it. Or rather, the absence of one.
Silence, deflection, and procedural language are not neutral. They are signals. They tell you what a system values, and what it is willing—or unwilling—to take responsibility for.
Repositioning as Graduation
When a system’s upper layers demand self-erasure among its lower levels to compensate for upstream failures and missteps, repositioning becomes an act of coherence.
There is a moment, after prolonged dissonance, when clarity settles in—not with anger, but with a strange calm. You realise that continued proximity to a particular structure is no longer an act of service; it is an act of diminishment.
When a system consistently selects for safety over substance, graduation does not require departure from one’s vocation or values. It requires critical discernment—the recognition that your work, your standards, and your way of seeing may need a different ecology in order to remain whole and generative.
Repositioning, in this sense, is not an act of withdrawal, but of ethical stewardship—ensuring that the work remains aligned with its deeper purpose rather than constrained by systems no longer able to hold it responsibly.
This is not a rejection of the work. It is a refusal to confuse fidelity with self-erasure. Such clarity arises when it is recognised that the work is bigger than any single person, group, or institution alone can hold. The continued act of serving is part of the Great Work many enlightened minds have posited for millennia.
This is not bitterness speaking.
It is discernment.
A Closing Reflection
Deepali Vyas ends her message by reassuring viewers: “You’re not crazy. You’re seeing the system exactly as it is.” That reassurance matters, especially for those who have spent years questioning their own perceptions in the face of institutional gaslighting masquerading as professionalism.
So let me say it plainly, for myself and for others navigating similar terrain:
If your excellence makes a system uneasy—
If your clarity is met with containment—
If your integrity is reframed as disruption—
Pause before you self-correct.
It may not be your work that needs adjusting.
It may be the system revealing its limits.
And when excellence threatens a system, the problem is not the excellence.
It is the system.
Suggested Practice
Noticing Protection of Mediocrity—and Preparing to Reposition Well
This practice is not about cultivating resentment, superiority, or disengagement. It is about developing accurate perception, inner coherence, and strategic self-respect—so that your work can continue without distortion.
Set aside 20–30 minutes. Journal or reflect quietly.
Part I: Noticing the Pattern
Without naming individuals, note the following within the system you are currently navigating:
Where do you see competence that is quietly sidelined or underutilised?
Where is mediocrity buffered, defended, or subtly advanced?
What behaviours are rewarded more consistently than outcomes or integrity?
When excellence appears, how does leadership tend to respond—curiosity, avoidance, containment?
Then ask yourself:
What seems to make this system most comfortable—and what seems to unsettle it?
Part II: Identifying Reinforcement from the Top
Now, gently turn your attention upward—not to assign blame, but to recognise structure.
How does leadership maintain a sense of stability or control?
What kinds of disruption are tolerated—and which are quietly discouraged?
What truths remain perpetually unspoken, even when widely sensed?
How is responsibility diffused, delayed, or redirected when consequences arise?
Notice patterns, not personalities.
Systems repeat themselves long before they change.
Part III: Assessing the Personal and Familial Cost
This step is not about self-criticism. It is about honest accounting.
Reflect quietly:
What is the emotional cost of delaying or side-stepping necessary repositioning?
What stories are you required to tell yourself in order to remain “aligned”?
How does this environment affect your energy, clarity, or sense of proportion when you return home?
What is your family absorbing indirectly—through mood, attention, or uncertainty?
This is not an indictment.
It is a reckoning with reality as it is currently lived.
Part IV: Developing a Repositioning Posture
Repositioning does not begin with resignation. It begins with inner realignment.
Consider:
What values or standards can no longer be compromised without cost?
What forms of work, contribution, or teaching restore your sense of agency and wholeness?
What resources—financial, relational, spiritual—need to be strengthened to support clarity?
What timeline feels measured and realistic, rather than reactive or fear-driven?
Now write a single sentence:
If I were to reposition well, I would want it to look like…
Hold that sentence lightly. Let it orient preparation rather than urgency.
A Final Reflection
Critiquing a system that protects mediocrity is not antagonism; it is boundary-setting at scale. When done with clarity rather than anger, it preserves dignity, safeguards family life, and creates space for work that does not require self-erasure to sustain.
Repositioning, in this sense, is not abandonment of the work.
It is stewardship of what matters most.
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About the Author
Dr. Baruti KMT-Sisouvong is a consciousness scholar, executive coach, and Certified Teacher of Transcendental Meditation® based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His work—spanning The Model for Perpetual Growth and Progress and The Seven Layers of Manifestation—explores how Pure Consciousness, neuroscience, and social-systems transformation intersect in the evolution of both the individual and society.
He is the Founder and Director of Radical Scholar Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to consciousness-based research and public scholarship, and President of Serat Group Inc., the parent company of Transcendental Brain, a consulting and educational platform bringing consciousness science into leadership and institutional development. He also serves as Host of the On Transcendence Podcast.
Alongside his wife, Mina, he co-directs the Cambridge and Metropolitan Boston TM Program and serves as Host and Founder of International Meditation Hour (IMH), a quarterly global gathering dedicated to the unifying power of silence.
He writes from the conviction that the most important race is not between nations or machines, but between the conditioned mind and the awakening soul.
To learn more about him, visit: https://www.barutikmtsisouvong.com/.