Let me begin with asking – What is extraordinary success in the first place? Is it about losing those extra 10 pounds? Is it about doubling your revenue? Is it about having seamless relationships? Well, only you can define what extraordinary success means to you.
However, the more important question is how to create that kind of results, specially at workplaces, where we have the maximum number of constraints to work within. Is it even possible? What does it take to create such results?
Extraordinary results need extraordinary vision.
Often vision is understood as the goal you want to accomplish or your end objective. However, is your vision big enough? Are you aiming at something extraordinary? Or is it just an extra scrape here and a spare slice of the pie there?
Are you just looking to increase your sales, or are you using your product to solve a problem for the end user? Are you just looking at the next two years in this role, or are you reading up about how the law is changing in your industry and applying that content to tweak your sales pitch?
Do you imagine yourself as a sales head or do you see yourself as an extraordinary, record-breaking, transformational sales head, in the next 5 years? Unless you have a vision that is large and scary enough, you will not be able to deliver extraordinary results.
Own It like it’s all yours.
Are you the type who owns some bit of the result and not the rest? Are you the sort of professional who believes that someone else is ‘responsible too’? Or are you someone who owns it like the boss?
Do you get your hands as dirty as the sales executive when needed? Are you willing to support your department heads when they want to brainstorm?
Are you willing to delegate not just responsibility but also the authority to your people?
Unless it’s a part of your culture where everyone owns it like a boss, the growth cannot increase by ten times.
Be in action.
No matter how aspirational goals you have, or how much inspiration drives you to accomplish these goals, unless you act, nothing comes out of it. Extraordinariness is not just in vision or the plan, it’s in massive and extraordinary action.
All extraordinary goals need extraordinary planning and resources and for that people need to act, rather than live in their heads. So, let me ask you once again, are you in action, or just in conversation?
Be Consistent
The key to master extraordinary results is to create principles and formulae that work. Like W Clement Stone says in his book “Success systems that never fail”, Failure can be reduced to a principle. So can be success. You just need to avoid one and apply the other.
You have great insights, you have more than enough resources, you also have the drive, but extraordinary results happen when you sustain them. One-time miracles are just that – miracles. Chance results of luck and fluke are not extraordinary results.
Persevere with Honor and Grace
Even when everything is great, there will be times when it will seem like you’re at the bottom of the pit. At such times, honor your word. At such times, know when to quit, and know how to quit with grace. Give yourself the permission to fail and persevere through tough times, even kill a product or create everything again from scratch.
The truth is, extraordinary success is not moving to 20 Million $ sales from 10 M $, but about moving to 100 M from 20 M. It is not about losing those 10 pounds, but it’s about being the healthiest you have ever been and continuing to be so.
At workplaces, it is not about getting promoted from an associate to a manager, it is about aspiring for the C-suite in the number of years, most people find ludicrously ambitious. It is not about just you getting a promotion, but you being able to drive a culture of empowerment and growth.
Extraordinary success is what people will never believe you could do in the first place; but you also do it remarkably well.
Extraordinary results need extraordinary courage. If you either have it, or you learn it; there is no way that your results as well as life won’t be extraordinary!