In terms of you maximising potential for yourself and those you serve, what does it take to go from “Good” to “Great”? Beyond that, what does it take to go from “Great” to “Elite”?
Or, as Josh Waitzkin puts it, what does it take to move from good, to great, to among the best. Who is Josh Waitzkin? Read on.
As one might expect, I’ve read many books on leadership and business (and many more in a highly eclectic way, often seeing links to my passion for leadership and performance). One of the books I recommend most is “Good to Great” by Jim Collins. A quote from that book:
“Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. We don’t have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don’t have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.”
So, as Jim defines it, great is certainly a high aspiration, achieved (by the definition he uses) by less than 1% of the companies he studied.
Let’s call “Great” the top 1%. What, though, if your aspiration is to be in the top 0.1%. let me call that “Great to Elite”. What if you choose not to “settle for a good life”, or even a “great” one, but your hunger is to be your absolute best, to be elite.
My early adult life was balanced between being an athlete and building education and career as well as family. I was certainly in the top 1% in more than one sport, but never in the elite, the top 1%. The difference there is a vast gulf. I’ve seen it in depth across multiple sports and now share learnings from sports and other fields in my work with leaders.
This is where I choose to work. It is a passion for me and also an awareness that this is where I can have my greatest impact for the world, being in service of leaders hungry to go from “Great to Elite” and so stretch to maximise their full potential in the world.
For absolute clarity, in my experience, you will never move from great to elite unless you do this from a sense of service and purpose. The commitment, resilience, and strength required means that if you are lead by ego, vanity, greed or other similar drivers, you will hit your limits before you maximise your potential.
Now, to Josh Waitzkin. First, thank you to my friend Justine Clement for bringing Josh to my attention. Justine and I were recently having coffee and talking about the power of getting out of our comfort zone and into our stretch or discomfort zone.
(if you’d like to browse that topic, I’ve written quite a number of articles around the term “comfort zone” that you can find here).
Justine then mentioned an interview Josh gave in which he explained how he actively seeks ‘discomfort and pain’ because it allows him to steepen his growth curve.
Who is Josh? You can read more on his site, suffice to say he became an elite (yes, top 0.1%) chess player, then moved on to an elite tai chi master. He now shares and teaches around such elite performance. One thing I would also note is that on his site he has shared fantastic book lists around the themes of Learning and Creativity, Philosophy and Leadership and Culture. Many books there that I’ve read, a number I hope to get to soon, and others I had not heard of. Thank you Josh!
Oh, and in closing, a personal note on my favourite article around getting out of your comfort zone. The article is about bravery and closes by telling a story around this picture. Enjoy.
