A different ball game

A specific piece of history made an indelible mark in my mind and my life. The year the Berlin Wall collapsed was also the year the world wide web rose to prominence and changed the world. Except for a few mammoth multinational companies, business used to be contested and competed but confined in local geographical locations. Today, anybody with a laptop equipped with WiFi connections can do commerce and sell to the entire world.

While technology levels the playing field and enables simple folks like you and me to sell stuff and services worldwide, technology also offers immense innovative business models that can disrupt incumbent industries and companies on a worldwide scale. And as I continuously mention in my seminars, the moment you log into the web you are already global. Does this not challenge us with the thought that in whatever we do, we need to benchmark against the world’s best?

Hidilyn Diaz is a good person and a good friend. I have featured her in many of my conferences. And have brought us honor by bringing us the silver medal during the last Olympic games in Rio in the field of weightlifting and then gave us the first gold medal during the last Asian Games. It is evident that her area of competition is in the global arena and her excellent work brought her fame and recognition. But would you think that somebody who wins in a local, provincial tournament would get the same degree of prominence? I would not think so. In fact, I suspect you could not give me the name of a local champion, could you?

Consider business in the same light. Business competes against the world’s best competitors, and some local famous business celebrity may still be enjoying success and prominence in their local territory but unless they wise up and develop a growth mindset with standards of delivery pitted against the world’s best then this local business’s days are numbered.

The old cliche that many speakers and trainers still use today does not make sense either. In their effort to encourage their audience or participants to refrain from launching unhealthy competition against their peers, they would often say: “Do not compete with others but compete with... yourself!” I  tweak the saying a little bit and challenge my participants with the phrase: “Do not compete with yourself. It is not a good standard for competition, and you need a lot of improvement in that area. But you compete against the world’s best. Benchmark against the global best of the best.” This is my attempt to make people understand that the rules and standards have changed and it is time to level up.

We just had our Level Up Leadership run this week. There was a number of young entrepreneurs, professionals, managers and team-leads from various BPO and other industries that attended. It is not uncommon for me to have many next-generation leaders (successors) sent by their parents to participate in the learning event, and sometimes the parents come with them too.

One young agency-leader participant from the insurance industry stood up to share his insights and learnings.  He said, “What I have realized from this training is that I need to position myself not only as the leader in my agency producing sales but I need to develop myself to be a leader with a global perspective and improve my leadership standard so I can produce more good leaders within my organization. For this is the key to growing my business. And if done properly, this would also be our competitive edge.” 

I have a feeling that he will do very well as various testimonies from past participants have attested today that they have achieved the same.

We all need to level up. But leveling up starts with the perspective of understanding that doing business, practicing our profession and producing creative body of work should meet global standards. Simply put, business today is a different ball game. The world is now a playing field wherein everyone or anyone with a forefinger and WiFi connection can play and compete. Perhaps this is also why more and more participants are signing up for the learning event and amazingly; even personalities from the entertainment business and professional fields have attended too. Hidilyn did.

Somebody says: “Excellence is never an accident. It is the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction, skillful execution, and the vision to see obstacles as opportunities.” I agree but if I were to tweak this a little; that vision should also include the ability to see the changing and increasing global standards of practice and the intense desire to excel in that arena as well.

So get trained, get ready and get the gold and be the world’s best in what you do.

(This time we go North! Attend the two exciting and inspiring days of leadership training with Francis Kong in his highly acclaimed Level Up Leadership seminar-workshop on May 21-22 at Seda Vertis North, Quezon City. For registration or inquiries contact April at +63928-559-1798 or register online at www.levelupleadership.ph)