“Pressure is something you feel when you don’t know what the hell you’re doing.” – Peyton Manning

There are a lot of people feeling pressure these days.  It’s not necessarily that, as Peyton Manning says, “you don’t know what the hell you’re doing.”  It’s more likely that you’re not focused on what you should be doing.

It’s frustrating, stressful, and exhausting to try and do the 1,000 things you think you have to do to succeed.  It’s also counter-productive.  There are probably no more than 3 or 4 things you need to focus on as long as you do them exceptionally well.

The reason people get sucked into the tornado of trying to do a thousand things each day is that they aren’t focused on those core activities that can actually advance your strategy.  Because you’re not focused, you aren’t winning on the basics, and that’s when people start looking for gimmicks, shortcuts or “silver bullets” to try and improve your results.

Lets get clear on what creates business success today.  I recently heard someone say what so many people foolishly believe, “It’s not enough to be the best anymore.  You have to have a ‘wow’ factor to set yourself apart.”

Let me point out the screamingly obvious.  If the marketplace decides that you are the best, that’s the biggest wow factor there is.  Only those who are far from being the best would ever say that it’s not enough.

If you truly are the best, you don’t need gimmicks.  But if your core value proposition is lacking, you’d better pile on all the glitz, buzzers, bells and gimmicks you can and hope it will work (It won’t.).  Let me say that again.  If you’ve not able to compete on the basics, then you quite naturally look for gimmicks as wow factors instead of letting quality and consistency be your wow factors.

Don’t confuse temporarily fashionable trends with sustained success.  Don’t confuse a catchy story with performance.  Look at who leads markets over a period of years and is able to sustain that lead through changing markets and economic conditions, then study how they do it.  They don’t do it with contrived wow factors.  They do it by dominating with quality and value.  They do it with constant, relentless improvement and innovation.  They do it by winning at the basics.  That’s how they wow, as in, “Wow, these guys are so good and they’re good every single time.

You goal should be to be so good at the basics that you are cutting edge.

By the way, I know that I lose some people simply by using the word “basics.”  There are those that will roll their eyes and say “Being good at the basics isn’t enough.  That’s just table stakes.  That just gets you in the game.”

But I’m not talking about just being good.  I’m talking about being so good at the basics that you are extraordinary.  I’m talking about not just being competitive, but actually winning on the basics.  Here’s reality:  if you win on the basics, you win it all.

There aren’t any silver bullets.  Not one.  There’s quality.  That’s not a bullet.  It’s the bomb.  It always wins.

Joe Calloway is a performance coach and advisor who helps great companies get even better.  He helps organizations focus on what is truly important, inspires constant improvement, and motivates people to immediate action.  Joe has been a business author, coach, and speaker for 30 years and his client list reads like an international Who’s Who in business, ranging from companies like Coca Cola and IBM to Saks Fifth Avenue and American Express. Joe is the author of the new book Be the Best at What Matters Most and four other ground-breaking business books including Becoming A Category of One: How Extraordinary Companies Transcend Commodity And Defy Comparison, which received rave reviews from The New York Times, Retailing Today, Publishers Weekly and many others.  Joe’s other books include:

• – Indispensable: How To Become The Company That Your Customers Can’t Live Without
• – Work Like You’re Showing Off! The Joy, Jazz, And Kick of Being Better Tomorrow Than You Were Today
• – Never By Chance: Aligning People And Strategy Through Intentional Leadership
• – and his newest book Be The Best At What Matters Most:  The Only Strategy You’ll Ever Need.

Joe has served on the faculty of the Center for Professional Development at Belmont and has presented at business conferences in countries around the world including Italy, Sweden, South Africa, England, Swaziland, Canada, Mexico and throughout the Caribbean.  Joe is a popular speaker for business meetings and events, and he also works with clients to help them achieve specific results and improvements in exclusive 90 day advisory programs. Although Joe has been inducted into the Speakers Hall of Fame, he doesn’t do traditional “speeches.”  Instead, Joe actively engages people in highly interactive keynotes and workshops that challenge assumptions and create new ways of thinking. Whether advising leaders, coaching, facilitating a workshop or speaking, Joe loves to work with great organizations that want to be even better.