What is greatness?

The Greatness Challenge

How do you define greatness? Is it the rare product of talent combined with good luck? Or can anyone achieve it?

Great organizations always produce four key outcomes:

Superior performance. They succeed financially in both the short and long term—and not just on an absolute basis, but relative to their market potential.
Intense customer loyalty. They earn not only the satisfaction of their customers but their true loyalty.
Engaged employees. The people who work for them are more than satisfied—they are energized and passionate about what they do.
Distinctive contribution. They do more than “business as usual”—they fulfill a unique mission that sets them apart from the crowd who are satisfied with “good enough.”

These four outcomes are unmistakable and measurable—and attainable by any organization.

How do you achieve greatness?

To build a great organization, you need great leaders and effective people who execute the organization’s mission with excellence.

Great leaders who inspire trust are essential. Without them, there is no vision of where to go—nor strategy nor systems for getting there. But great leaders aren’t enough.

Effective individuals are essential. Without effective people, the organization is destined for mediocrity or worse. But effective individuals aren’t enough.

Institutionalized Focus and Execution is also essential. Without a shared process for focusing on and executing the organization’s mission, the most inspired and capable people fall short of greatness. But with such a process, great people can build something important and enduring.

The Rewards of Greatness

Why would an organization “go for greatness?” Why not settle for merely being good? What is the value of meeting the greatness challenge?

It turns out that the rewards of achieving this rare level of success are enormous. Great organizations:

Are 50 percent more profitable than their peers.
Grow more than twice as fast as their peers.
Win the loyalty of all stakeholders, which makes it easier to continue to win in the future.

Beyond these rewards, there is something deeper and more meaningful: the reward that comes only to those who have truly paid the price to excel.

NEXT: FranklinCovey Organizational Solutions

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