The Boring Truth About Being THE BEST: Five Back-to-Basics Tips to Help You Create a Culture of Greatness (and Power Through the Recession) Being the best is no big secret. The power of doing the little, ordinary, boring things right—over and over again. By Jon Gordon What if everyone in your company worked relentlessly to be the best? The best salesperson…the best customer service professional…the best manager…the best (let’s just say) cake decorator or corporate blogger or nonprofit fundraiser in the industry? It’s a simple notion but one with profound implications. After all, a company made up of the best people in the business is itself the best in the business—and while there are no sure bets, being the best is the closest you’ll ever come to a get-out-of-the-recession-free card. Any company can create a culture of greatness. Why don’t they? Probably because they don’t know how. People tend to think there’s some kind of magic bullet or secret formula to being the best, but it’s just not true. For an individual, greatness is all about the fundamentals. It’s about getting the basics right, over and over again, every day of the week. For a company, it’s about every employee doing that. It’s not that complicated, really—and if we’ve learned anything from the recession it’s that the companies that focus on the basics are the ones that survive when times get tough. There are eleven traits and habits that separate “the best” from “the rest,” and I reveal them in my new book Training Camp: What the Best Do Better Than Everyone Else (Wiley, 2009, ISBN: 978-0-470-46208-9, $22.95). Get every employee in your company to absorb and practice them and soon you’ll have a team that’s unstoppable—yes, even in a stalled economy. Anyone can become successful if they possess the focus, initiative, dedication, and positive energy required to do so. The ideas in Training Camp are based on my work with teams such as the Atlanta Falcons and the Jacksonville Jaguars and world-class organizations such as Campbell Soup, Northwestern Mutual, Publix Super Markets, J.P. Morgan, Texas Children’s Hospital, and the FBI. Despite its friendly, everyone-loves-a-good-story approach, it’s packed with practical information that gets results. Training Camp is all about what it takes to rise to the top of your game—whatever that game may be. It’s all about the habits the best of the best in all professions have in common. Leaders who can engrain these habits into their culture will find that the slow and steady tortoise approach really does work. Here are some tips for getting back to basics: Be willing to outwork everyone else. You might think being the best is an accident of birth, that certain people are endowed with superior genes or happen to be born to parents who live in the right zip code. Not true. You become the best through hard work and “zoom focusing” on the (often little and ordinary and boring) fundamentals of your particular job until you master them. I read a great story about Will Smith where he attributed his success as an actor to his strong work ethic. He told an interviewer, “I’m not afraid to die on a treadmill. I will not be outworked. You may be more talented than me. You might be smarter than me. And you may be better looking than me. But if we get on a treadmill together, you are going to get off first, or I’m going to die. It’s really that simple. I’m not going to be outworked.” I love that quote! And I think the lesson for companies is two-fold. One, make sure your employees are hard workers, willing to hone their individual job skills until they master them. Talent matters, sure, but perseverance matters more. Two, make sure your company stays the course long enough to become the best at what you do. If you keep shifting your strategies or your market focus, that can’t happen. Get the little things right. Remember, there is no secret recipe for being the best. The art is in putting the recipe’s ingredients together. The best take action every day and do the common tasks—returning phone calls, filling out reports, capturing customer information, preparing for meetings—with uncommon focus, dedication, and a commitment to excellence. To offer an example, great salespeople do the same things mediocre salespeople do. They just do so with more focus and consistency. And great companies are made up of employees who do what they’re supposed to do, every day of the week. Don’t lower your standards when no one’s looking. I like to tell the story of a CEO who insisted that his company’s mailroom, which no customer ever visited, be kept neat and tidy at all times. His point? The best do the right thing even when no one can see them, and the mailroom is a symbol of that. The same might be said for behaviors like surfing the web when the boss is at a meeting or badmouthing clients behind their backs. Remember, being the best is all about forming good habits. If employees do the right thing all the time, the right thing will be second nature when it counts. Don’t focus on outcomes. Instead, focus on the process that gets you there. You know how motivational gurus are always telling you to “visualize your goal”? I disagree with this philosophy. In the same way that great athletes stay in the moment rather than obsessing about the outcome of the game, great companies keep their collective nose to the grindstone, zoom focusing on the day-to-day tasks that made them great in the first place. A great example is Organic Valley, a provider of organic dairy products, produce, meats, and other natural foods. Each year they continue to grow dramatically and yet they don’t have an “outcome” goal in mind. Rather, they focus on their purpose and process, and this fuels their growth. Whatever you do, don’t rest on your proverbial laurels. Despite popular misconception, success doesn’t really breed success. It breeds complacency. Coaches and business leaders often dread success far more than they dread failure. Too often a team will have a successful season or a player will have a great year and when they come back the following season they think all they have to do is show up and they’ll enjoy the same results, forgetting it was the hard work, focus, and process that helped them create their success. Well, that happens in business, too. The moment you think you have arrived at the door of greatness is the moment it gets slammed in your face. The key is to always be innovating, offering new products and services, improving customer service, and staying one step ahead of your competition. The solution is to stay humble and hungry. Perhaps you’re worried that times are so tough and the competition is so fierce that becoming the best company in your industry is far out of your grasp. That’s a misconception. The truth is, the gap between “the best” and “the rest” is very, very small. In baseball, consider the difference between a .250 batter and a .350 batter. If you calculate 162 games a year, 4 or 5 bats a game, the difference between a .250 batter and a .350 batter is only 1.7 hits a week. It’s the little things that separate the best from the rest. If you can do those important little things just 10 percent better than the competition, you can rise to the top of your field. But it’s the kind of thing that can’t happen by decree. It has to come from within the employees themselves. They have to know what the drills are and they have to want to do the training. Once those conditions are met, the sky is the limit. # # # About the Author: Jon Gordon is a speaker, consultant, and author of the international bestseller The Energy Bus: 10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work and Team with Positive Energy and The No Complaining Rule: Positive Ways to Deal with Negativity at Work. Jon’s new book, Training Camp: What the Best Do Better Than Everyone Else, was released in May of 2009. The message in Jon’s books and speaking presentations is such that NFL coaches such as Jack Del Rio, Mike Smith, the PGA Tour, and the FBI have called on Jon to inspire and benefit their teams. Jon and his books have been featured on CNN, NBC’s Today Show and in Forbes, Fast Company, O Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. Clients such as the Atlanta Falcons, Campbell Soup, Northwestern Mutual, Publix Super Markets, and JPMorgan Chase also call on Jon to bring out the best in their leaders and teams. Jon is a graduate of Cornell University and holds a master’s in teaching from Emory University. When he’s not speaking to businesses or schools, you can find him playing lacrosse or basketball with his wife and two “high energy” children. For more information, please visit www.jongordon.com. About the Book: Training Camp: What the Best Do Better Than Everyone Else (Wiley, 2009, ISBN: 978-0-470-46208-9, $22.95) is available at bookstores nationwide, major online booksellers, or directly from the publisher by calling 800-225-5945. In Canada, call 800-567-4797. Eleven Traits of the Best of the Best Excerpted from Training Camp: What the Best Do Better Than Everyone Else(Wiley, 2009, ISBN: 978-0-470-46208-9, $22.95), by Jon Gordon 1. The Best know what they truly want. At some point in their lives, The Best have a “Eureka!” moment when their vision becomes clear. Suddenly they realize what they really, truly want to achieve. They find their passion. When that happens they are ready to strive for greatness. They are ready to pay the price. 2. The Best want it more. We all want to be great. But only the best of the best are willing to do what it takes to be great. The best don’t just think about their desire for greatness, they act on it. They have a high capacity for work. They do the things that others won’t do, and they spend more time doing it. When everyone else is sleeping, the best are practicing and thinking and improving. 3. The Best are always striving to get better. They are always looking for ways to learn, apply, improve and grow. They stay humble and hungry. They are lifelong learners. They never think they have “arrived”—because they know that once they think that, they’ll start sliding back to the place from which they came. 4. The Best do ordinary things better than everyone else. For all their greatness, the best aren’t that much better than the others. They are simply a little better at a lot of things. Everyone thinks that success is complicated, but it’s really simple. In fact, the best don’t do anything different. They just do the ordinary things better. 5. The Best zoom-focus. Success is all about the fundamentals, and the fundamentals are little and ordinary and often boring. It’s not just about practice, but focused practice. It’s not just about taking action, but taking zoom-focused action. It’s about practicing and perfecting the fundamentals. 6. The Best are mentally stronger. Today’s world is no longer a sprint or a marathon. It’s a series of sprints combined with a boxing match. You’re not just running, you are getting hit along the way. The Best are able to respond to and overcome all of this with mental and emotional toughness. They are able to tune out the distractions and stay calm, focused and energized when it counts. 7. The Best overcome their fear. Everyone has fears. The best of the best all have fear, but they overcome it. To beat your enemy you must know your enemy. Average people shy away from their fears. They either ignore them or hide from them. However, the best seek them out and face them with the intent of conquering them. 8. The Best seize the moment. When the best are in the middle of their performance they are not thinking “What if I win?” or “What if I lose?” They are not thinking “What if I make a mistake or miss the shot?” They are not interested in what the moment produces but are only concerned with what they produce in the moment. When all eyes are watching, they rise to the occasion. As a result, the best define the moment rather than letting the moment define them. 9. The Best tap into a power greater than themselves. The best are conductors, not resistors. They don’t generate their own power, but act as conduits for the greatest power source in the world. It’s not always politically correct, but you can’t talk about greatness without talking about God. It would be like talking about breathing without mentioning the importance of air. 10. The Best leave a legacy. The best live and work with a bigger purpose. They leave a legacy by making their life about more than them. This larger purpose is what inspires them to be the best and strive for greatness over the long term. It helps them move from success to significance. 11. The Best make everyone around them better. They do this through their own pursuit of excellence and in the excellence they inspire in others. One person in pursuit of excellence raises the standards of everyone around them. And they do this in both their work and life…The point is to strive to be your best and inspire others to be their best, because it’s in the striving where you find greatness, not in the outcome. # # #