bizlife Column Six
By Nido Qubein

We’re living in extraordinary times. Competition is keen and customers are demanding. What does it take to succeed day in and day out, year in and year out?

It takes extraordinary performance. And to get extraordinary performance, a company needs to be populated with extraordinary people.

Where do you find these extraordinary people? Right there in your existing work force. They may be ordinary people at the moment, but the ordinary can be transformed into the extraordinary.

Sound impossible?

It isn’t if you consider that an extraordinary person is simply someone who consistently does the things ordinary people can’t do or won’t do. Ordinary people will do the extraordinary if you give them strong reasons for doing it, and if you teach them how to do it.

You don’t have to be extraordinarily gifted to become an extraordinary person. Success is available to anyone who will learn a few simple principles and put them into practice daily.

Being extraordinary doesn’t mean that you aim for the big breakthrough. Extraordinary quality usually comes from small, incremental improvements day in and day out. Fred Friendly established Federal Express by promising overnight delivery, absolutely and positively. His people delivered on the promise day in and day out, but they made constant, incremental improvements along the way.

You can achieve constant improvement by helping your people cultivate an attitude of excellence, and making it a part of their everyday activities.

Extraordinary people are unwilling to settle for the 99% quality standard. They know that if everyone was content with the 99% standard, we would be without telephone service for 15 minutes each day, the Post Office would lose 1.7 million pieces of first-class mail daily, doctors and nurses would drop 35,000 newborn babies a year, 200,000 people would get the wrong drug prescriptions, and 2 million people would die annually of food poisoning.

Extraordinary people will help you establish a differential advantage that will distinguish your company from its competitors. That differential advantage (DA) could come from doing things faster, cheaper, more skillfully or more thoroughly than your competition. It may result from your having more experience, more specific knowledge or more favorable locations. It may come from being the biggest, the most flexible or the most accessible of all the companies in your business.

Whatever your DA, you develop it by inspiring your ordinary employees to become extraordinary by maintaining attitudes of excellence all day every day. It’s not an impossible task. You achieve it making a little progress at a time, regularly and consistently.

ARTICLE TAGLINE FOR Nido Qubein

Nido Qubein is an international speaker and consultant.

Visit his website at www.nidoqubein.com,
write to Creative Services, Inc.,
P. O. Box 6008, High Point, NC 27262
or call 1-800-989-3010.

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