The Basics Drive the Exceptional

As humans, we tend to over-complicate things. Forward progress often brings new challenges and overcoming those challenges brings new discoveries. What follows is an inevitable cycle - progress, challenge, discovery, complexity.

Eventually, we drift to the point that we lose sight of executing the basics well. We find ourselves overwhelmed with managing all of the nuanced details, the results of which we often can’t tie back to results with data. Overwhelmed, we try to reel it all back in again and commit to a “back to basics” strategy. Show of hands if you’ve ever declared “getting back to basics”.

When it comes to implementing change, this risk is heightened. We think that we need more details, structure, and planning, but often it is too much. We get overwhelmed by the complexity or lost in nuance and the result is that we don’t make any meaningful progress, or many times we don’t even begin.

The point is to learn from the journey once you are taking action. Many times you can get further just by consistently executing a simple game plan. Plus, you very clearly know what you’re doing and why without getting lost in details.

Just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it isn’t effective. But we’re often naturally distrustful of simple answers and solutions – we think for an idea to have merit it must offer unique insights or secrets in order to be effective. Other times we’ll seek a trick shortcut that insulates us from the heavy lift of doing the basic and boring work that will get us our result. Both are nasty habits and perspectives.

I’ve come to an opposite perspective - understanding something deeply enough to identify the fundamental key drivers of results is a gift.

When you are in full command of those drivers and you pursue them with purpose, you will then be on the path to being exceptional.

My reminder for this is “The Basics Drive the Exceptional”.