The Excellence Trap

Excellence is the largest hidden cost in business, and it is slowly killing us, our people, and our businesses. Holding them back. Pulling them into mediocrity. Threatening them with failure. And no one is immune.

Archos Advisors is the first to diagnose the Excellence Trap that holds back all high-achieving people and organizations, and the first to create a unique path to Leadership Mastery.

Excellence is a sham, a dead end. It doesn’t deliver on its promises, and it hurts in particular people who have the best intentions, the greatest talent, and the greatest commitment to achieve great things. The irony is that the costs of excellence only become apparent after one has accomplished much.

Here's how it works: The very things that make us excellent in the first place are finite; they deplete. And when they are deployed past this point, they begin to undermine our success. At this point, striving for more excellence, in the same old way, destroys our effectiveness and incurs unacceptable costs. And, ironically, it specifically happens to everyone who works hard and achieves much, both individuals and organizations. A qualitative shift to mastery becomes the only way forward.

Escaping the Excellence Trap is a paradigm-making idea. It frees us from low returns, high costs, merely marginal competitive advantage, incrementalism, and unsustainability. Mastery solves the problem.