From Greatness to Excellence!
November 22, 2009
A growth of a person is not always exponential. Everyone at some point of time goes through a phase what I call as a “Plateau”. That’s when the growth is stopped, you perform the best but still you not rise above the expectations. This could be any area of life. It just takes a few important steps to follow to make sure that you get to the next level. Its just takes a small difference to make a huge impact.
The Butterfly Effect:
Small variations of the initial condition of a dynamical system may produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system. (Source: Wikipedia)
A small minor difference in your own life could make a huge impact later. This is true in every sense of it. When you want to achieve big you don’t need to make big changes in life, it just takes a small and minute change in the way you are doing things to impact the final outcome.
Look at this small example in the picture to the left where at the beginning of the lines the difference is so small. Yet look at the final outcome the difference between the two lines. Its huge right? It’s the same impact that is created in life too. If we make a small difference in life, then we can achieve more. if we make the small difference of having to run 1 mile extra every day does it have a larger impact? More energy, fit body and so on. If we were to save an additional 10$ every day which is not much for a day, but in 10 years would mount to huge amounts (This is the mindset of a millionaire in fact).
What does to take to make this change?
Motivation? No its not motivation that is needed. Motivation is to make sure that you do beyond your perceived capabilities. But this minor change is not about motivation. Its is about DISCIPLINE. Discipline is something that we might not like but is useful for us. That’s Excellence in Life!
If you need to shed 30 pounds you need motivation. If you were to have a 6 pack abs that need Discipline. That’s moving from Greatness towards Excellence.
How to identify this small change that you need
Its quite simple to identify the small change. In the area or the field that are striving for excellence, there are two zones in which operate. One is the Comfort Zone. We spend most of our time in the comfort zone. The comfort zone is where are have the highest security where we know that not many things can go wrong and also are achievable. Unfortunately we operate here with only 90% of our potential. In the comfort zone, there is no sense of uncertainty.
What we need to do is just move of it and stretch. Once you move out of the comfort zone, reaching your excellence is much more easier and remaining in that Stretch zone is even more important.
Easy way to stretch!
A critical way to move towards excellence from greatness is by Performance Measure and having a feedback system. When you have a relative grading of your various activities, then you get into the groove of understanding what you must do and what is missing. Like I always say any Goal must be Measurable, else it can lead to a disaster.
When you have a performance measure, having a Feedback system is even more important. Many people tend to forget the need for feedback mechanism. It becomes a fear for them to ask for feedback on their performance. I call it always ‘Feedback’ because when you get feedback, you can either take what you want or just ignore. Reviews, comments are not as good a feedback. Its just on your performance from someone who feels certain ways!
“If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.” - Colin Powell
The Big Picture Story!
Greatness to Excellence is more of the mindset. I know of people who say “sorry not now, I don’t think we can do it” and so. My role model, Dhirubhai Amabani, a business tycoon said “I am deaf to the word ‘no’”. This lead him to greatness. He never used to like people coming to him with a NO, instead he wanted solutions. If a thought arises in our mind, then we can do something to achieve it, and it just takes perseverance to do it.
Once you know what it takes to achieve excellence, find some way to make it happen! That’s by stepping in to the stretch zone and doing more than what you can actually do. That will take you from greatness to excellence.
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5 Responses to “From Greatness to Excellence!”
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Sir,
The article is fantastic. In simple words it is beyond description. Thanks for this wonderful topic.
With regards,
R. Madhavan
Nice article….
Started working on it..
“I am deaf to the word ‘no’”
This is a great attitude to have in life. With this mind set I am sure, I can achieve what I want to achieve in my life.
Shri
I rate the above article excellent.It opens the mind and motivate me to achieve more and more by coming out of the comfort zone.
I like the article very much esp the example you gave for discipline.