Striving towards Excellence

-Karthik Gurumurthy

I consider myself very  fortunate to work with some of the best companies and highest performers of our day. I noticed that many had succeeded at becoming the best in their space, but that once they did, they faced an even bigger challenge: how to become better.

When you are at the top of your game improvement are more incremental and harder fought. You have got few if any to emulate. You now are the leader, and just maintaining much less increasing that lead is difficult.

If you are already among the best, or even really good, why would you even want to get better?

 First consider this: we all know how good we have become, but none of us know who good we could be. No person or organization I’ have ever worked with has ever claimed they were living or doing business at peak potential. Why is that? We simply don’t know what is possible, so we keep aiming to get better and find out just how good we could be. That makes life and business incredibly interesting. 

I believe that there are three vital factors to consider for upgrading yourselves.

The first is change: with so many changes occurring around us, we need to improve our knowledge and skills just to keep up.

The second is customers. They have increasing expectations. Ever noticed that the more you do for customers, the more they expect? Of course. And that’s why you need to continue to increase your value proposition.

Finally, your capabilities are above whatever level you are performing at now.  We don’t benchmark against our competitors, we benchmark against our capabilities.

Nobody gets better “accidentally.” Only wine improves with age without trying. You don’t accidentally improve significantly, reach the highest summits or make the greatest positive impact without intentionality.

How much do you want to get better? Teachers can teach you, coaches can coach you, and can pump you up but it is what you do with the information that matters.

Ongoing improvement requires a process and is based on principles you correctly and consistently apply. The exciting thing is, when are intentional and take action, the door to your future swings wide open. Your willingness to work at improving yourself is the secret  sauce to realizing your full potential.

You supply the commitment to getting better coupled with the right plan and process and your effort will start to pay off. It is definitely worth it.

Not only will it benefit you, but it will also benefit the people around you.