How Obsession and High Standards Drive Success in Business

Discover how obsession with high standards can be the key to transforming your business and surpassing the competition.

How you do one thing is how you do everything.

This quote is attributed to T. Harv Eker. There are a number of people that are obsessed. The obsessed demand high standards. The best example of one obsessed my raising standard is Steve Jobs.

In a marketing class at Harvard Business School, the professor asked whether Apple should be an ongoing concern when they only had 5% of the computer market. I raised my hand, and responded that all the BMWs and Mercedes in the faculty parking lot should be subject to that same test of market share.

The next day, I walked in with my MacBook. No less than ten people surrounded a box that wasn’t capturing market share but instead capturing their attention and their imagination. Jobs followed with the iPhone, iPad, and saving music followed Apple TV.

You should find your obsession and a passion to rival a Jobs or a Musk. You should also work like the obsessed. “How you do one thing is how you do everything.”

Internal Struggles with Minimal Viable Standards

You are surrounded with people that are content to do just enough to be acceptable. You are also encircled by managers and leaders who uphold these low standards. These two groups work well together, as neither will cause the other to raise their standards. Once this takes hold in a company, you are better off going to the gas station, filling up a number of gas cans and burn the business to the ground.

I would take the odds that you are aware of the two groups with low standards in your company. You may also have experienced a great employee leave your company because the standard was too low for this person’s standards. You will have no trouble identifying one with a higher standard.

On a flight, I was sitting next to a senior sales leader. As we were talking about success and hiring, my seat mate said: “I only hire salespeople that are crisp.” I didn’t need to ask him what “crisp” because I was looking at it. White shirt. Expensive Tie. Creased. Thin Minimal attache case.

External Impact of Minimal Viable Standards

“How you do one thing is how you do everything.”

Often times, you lose clients with high standards. When your contacts have a higher standard than you have, there is great chance you will be displaced by a competitor with the higher standards.

If you are known for doing “One-Cheek” work you will have a difficult time winning and retaining and growing your clients. Your reputation will precede you as people talk about the underwhelming experience you provided them. This is not the same as having a problem or a single failure, as every great company has these issues. Problems are not the same as low standards.

Navigating the Conflict Between High Standards and Obsession

There is another side of the two groups above, the ones with low standards. These two other groups have higher standards. The high standards often starts with leader with high standards. these leaders seek out true believers, even if they struggle to build the teams they need.

The true believers with high standards will always conflict with those with a low quality. They will try to force those with low standards to raise their . High standards requires that one does hard things. It also means they don’t take short cuts or fail to do what needs to be done.

Ensuring Client Satisfaction through High Standards

Those who acquire clients will want their delivery teams to ensure they provide the value they sold the client. No one wants to win a new client only to have to replace soon after their delivery team starts to execute.

Ons strategy you might consider is to help your operations understand what the client is expecting as a way to make certain they don’t do something that will cause the client take a call from a competitor with higher standards.

In one business, we hired new employees with experience in the industry. When they were being onboarded and trained, three of them asked: “Do you really do this work every time,” confessing the companies they worked for didn’t do this work, even though some of these things are required by laws. These employees were more than happy to do this work and felt better about their work

Achieving High Standards for Business Success

If you want to improve your business and acquire and deliver for your clients, leaders need to raise the standards of everything you do. This may mean you have to replace a person who refuses to do their best work. You may also have to hire people who will be excited to work with people who want to do good work.

It takes time and effort and higher caliber outcomes inside and for the clients and customers that bought from you. You want you and your team to chase “a standard of exceptional.”

Conclusion: Finding Your Tribe to Chase Exceptional Standards

In all endeavors, you will find that there are people that are doing as little as possible. They are not engaged in doing the exceptional work that attracts clients. Instead, they tend to cause the largest amount of problems.

In these same companies, there are leaders and others with higher grade work. If you want to chase exceptional, you will need to find your tribe. You and your tribe will need to work on building teams capable for bringing this standard. Do good work!