Thoughts on excellence

Excellence itself, rather than money or status, is the aim worth pursuing. It is the goal we must follow, for excellence automatically leads to wealth. There are two ways to look at excellence:

• Excellence as a ranking: We can treat excellence as an absolute metric. The single metric defines our success. Example: 10000 sales > 1000 sales or revenue earned in a year.

• Excellence as a niche: We cannot judge an elephant by its speed and an ant by its strength. The things that make them unique helps them to thrive and succeed in different ways. Leveraging your unique strengths is also excellence.

The first step is to understand what is the type of excellence we are chasing. Our working lives with numerous specialities feels like a niche. Within a speciality, the metrics of successes are limited - we judge a salesperson by the number of sales, marketer by the number of leads etc.

For different excellences, we need different strategies to succeed,

• Niche: When defining excellence as a niche, it is about exploring the right elements that can help us amplify our strengths and succeed. More than being the best, it is about discovering what you are better at than others.

• Ranking: Once we discover the niche, we need to double down and try to optimize and sharpen our skills so that we are better than our peers.

A thing to remember: The narrower the field, the more we need to be better at the skills we have. For broader areas, it is more important to identify our niche.

When we wish to grow in the ranking, we need to have a laser-sharp focus and relentless efficiency. On the other hand, for developing a niche, we need to explore and have an experimental mindset. We must be aware of when to switch from exploration to efficiency; from pursuing excellence in niche towards ranking.

Reference: Two Types of Excellence, Scott Young, August 2020