On ambition...

This past Thursday, I went to a Beyoncé concert... it was good, but it was not great. You might wonder what was missing?

The music was too loud so that one could barely hear her sing... and her voice is one of the main reasons to go to a Beyoncé concert - at least for me.

The choreography was OK... but I have seen better ones on America's got talent. The visual effects were nice, but far from spectacular. The food in the business lounge was anything but good. The list goes on...

Of course, some people considered the concert to be amazing... which is fair as observations and judgements are highly subjective.

After the concert, some of the people joining me on the experience asked me why I was disappointed and to what I was comparing this show.

My answer: Michael Jackson's 1992 Dangerous Tour. I know there are many points of view on Michael Jackson. I have no clue whether the accusations against him were right or wrong... this is not what I am talking about here.

What always inspired me was his ambition for perfection. Every move, every sound, every visual effect, the list goes on and on, had to be perfect!

He wanted people to experience a perfect show... that's it, no excuses.

He wanted to deliver at the highest standard possible and he inspired his crew around him to do the same thing. He even inspired people in completely other professions to have the ambition to step up their game.

Here is a video of Magic Johnson - one of the greatest basketball players of all time - where he speaks about how touring with Michael Jackson made him aspire to be a better basketball player.

Watching Michael's show as a kid, I remember telling myself, whatever you do as a profession, work hard to do it as close to perfection as possible.

For that to happen, one obviously needs a certain level of talent... but beyond that it is all about hard work.

It's about not being OK with 90% or 95%... but pushing for even more. It's about frequently asking for feedback i.e. other people's perspective to cover for your own blind spots. It's about constant innovation which means constantly stepping out of your own comfort zone.

Do I mean to be perfect in every aspect of my life? NO!!! That would be way too much. But for the profession I select, I will constantly set myself higher ambitions. I will constantly challenge myself and learn from my customers. I will try new things that I have seen others use or where I can imagine being the front runner.

I remember in one of my classes, a participant asked me whether I would always create the visuals from scratch. My response: "Of course... otherwise you would not have the experience you just had, and I would not be practicing my visualization skills. On top of that, creating the visuals from scratch allows me to tell a slightly different story whenever I choose to do so!"

Not being efficient was the foundation for me becoming better and better at story telling and visualizing. Doing things from scratch allowed me to constantly challenge myself, test new ideas, and finetune my messaging.

This is probably a message that will not land well with everyone... but I believe we are experiencing a crisis in mediocracy. Instead of constantly pushing for higher standards we are rewarding mediocraty.

High standards does not mean long hours... first and foremost it means setting an aspiration and then focusing on achieving it. The long hours come into play when we want to beat a certain deadline or get into competition with others.

But what if we are competing with ourselves? What if we set higher standards for ourselves to delight our customers? What if we decide to continuously improve whatever we are doing with the ambition to build better products, better customer experience, and ultimately better business models?

Does that mean that we ignore our competitors? Not necessarily. We can take inspiration and we can see where the bar should be at least... but we should not let our competitors hold us down. We should have the ambition to be so much more of what we want to be. #FromNothingComesNothing

PS: If you have not seen Michael Jackson's 1992 Dangerous tour, here is the video from Bucharest: https://youtu.be/Hxgo-Qu-ZZE