How do you measure your business and it’s success? There’s a good chance that you are measuring against your industry’s averages.
“What are our competitors doing?”, “What is standard industry practice?”, “Let’s benchmark ourselves against the industry.”
This sort of thinking might raise an underperforming business up to the level of others but when average businesses hit any sort of resistance, such as competition, negative or challenging market conditions they generally find themselves in trouble again.
Instead, we should all be aiming to be extraordinary.
Consider the current extraordinary businesses and leaders and what they set out to achieve.
Steve Jobs wasn’t just content selling computers and phones…he wanted to make a “dent in the universe.”
Google didn’t just set out to create a popular search engine…they want to “organise the world’s information.”
Elon Musk is taking “moonshots” in several industries by aiming to change motor vehicles, energy production and storage, world travel and space travel.
Even if they never quite fully accomplish their mission, they will have changed the world and made billions along the way.
This article was first published in the Newcastle Herald on October 16, 2017.
