There is no one-thing

Especially when times get tough, companies, organizations and individuals, in their effort to turn things around quickly, will often look for the one-dramatic-thing they can do to make life better. Unfortunately, because they become so myopic by virtue of concentrating the majority of their resources on the one-thing, they do not spend much time or energy on the many things that attributed to their success in the first place.

Successful businesses and individuals made their success by doing many things well. Therefore when things get tough, it defies logic to begin the search for the one-thing that will reverse the slide. It is just not that simple. Unfortunately many companies and businesses do look for and find one-thing that they think will make the difference and then push hard and fast in implementing and executing based on their belief that if they do the one-thing well, all will turn out well.

In his book, How The Mighty Fall, author Jim Collins uses research to chronicle the fall of some industry giants. Most of the failures were self-inflicted and many of the companies that did fail, were guilty of looking for, and finding, that one-thing, that they just knew would serve as the fulcrum to tip the scales back in their favor. They did not find such a thing because it does not exists.

What happened is, they stopped doing the many things that made them successful, or they did not adjust to the changing business environment quickly enough and after they realized it, it was too late. They had invested untold fortunes and human resources in the one-thing, only to discover that if they had begun to look at everything, they could have corrected course by making several improvements and probably survived and maybe thrived.

Distinguish Yourself

In order to succeed at higher and higher levels, you are going to have to distinguish yourself from the crowd and distinguish yourself from your former self. There is only one way to continually justify your existence in the professional world and that is to get better every day at what you do. The only way to get better is to make sure you are utilizing your time wisely and making the best of the lessons you learn from your efforts.

How to distinguish yourself is a matter of looking at the things that you and your leadership measure and manage. Once you have clearly identified the things that are measured and managed, simply decide which one of those activities and behaviors will, if you got better at it, would have the greatest impact on your positive performance. Then concentrate a significant amount, if not most, of your time on improving your performance in that targeted area.

Distinguish yourself by:

Making more calls

Increasing your revenue average by individual clients

Sell more to more

Make more presentations

Increase the number of contracts or commitments

Read more books

There is a great time to start and that time is now.

Colonel Sanders was sixty five when his first restaurant failed due to traffic construction which was, of course, beyond his control. That was when he decided to distinguish himself by taking to the road and talking to potential franchisees. The rest is a distinguished history.