The dangerous lure of 'average'

"I'm intimidated by the fear of being average".

Taylor Swift

People often want to know what the industry average is.

They want something to measure against.

A standard.

A sense of certainty.

It gives business leaders and professionals something to benchmark

But the hidden cost is when a benchmark becomes a target

And all too often, this is the case.

The challenge with industry averages is that they tend to be on the mean side

You don’t get to see the upper percentile results

And the lower percentiles drag everybody down.

And often there are more lower percentiles than upper

So it is often a hidden drag to the bottom.

Before Roger Bannister ran the first sub-4-minute mile.

The world believed it was impossible.

Medical experts claimed the human body couldn’t do it.

So, runners trained to get close—but not to break it.

Then, in 1954, Roger Bannister did it.

Six weeks later, someone else did it.

A year later, three more runners did it.

Today, elite athletes don’t aim to break four minutes; they aim to obliterate it.

The benchmark wasn’t a limitation anymore.?

It was irrelevant.

Bannister didn't just beat the benchmark—he rendered it obsolete.

Working towards an industry average can sometimes mask a lack of ambition.

If you are comfortable with the safety net of an industry average, you may never attempt to go beyond

For example, if you Google website?conversion rates by industry, you’l see that in financial services, it’s typically reported between 2-6%.

But in practice? I’ve seen conversion rates of 30-40%.

At scale.

The difference between a 5% conversion rate and a 30% conversion rate?

500% more business.

How to Escape the Benchmark Trap

• Forget the Mean - Find the Best: Benchmark against the top 1% in your field and reverse-engineer their methods.
• Set Targets on Potential, Not Past: Instead of asking, “How do we reach industry average?”, ask, “What would it take to achieve 5x or 10x results?”
• Relentlessly Apply the 80/20 Principle: In any business, 20% of actions drive 80% of results. Identify and amplify those high-leverage activities; ruthlessly ignore everything else.
• Play offence, not defence: Benchmarks are inherently defensive—they encourage merely meeting standards. Instead, set targets ambitious enough to scare your competitors.

If you measure your performance against an ‘average’ and make that a target, it is likely you will get average results.

Why settle for what's typical?

Set targets that pull you forward

(and don't hold you back)

Thank you for reading,

- Chris