Escape From Excellence

I live for Leadership Mastery, and I invite you to experience it. But what is it?

Let’s start with mastery itself, and what it is not. Mastery isn’t the pinnacle of excellence. You don’t reach it by being most excellent, in Ted-speak. That will only keep you out of mastery. Mastery is different from excellence not in degree, but in kind. Every master knows this; but nobody else seems to be in on the secret. As Charlie Parker said, “Learn all this stuff (to be excellent) and then forget it (to be a master).”

So what is it? Mastery is when performance increases exponentially, while costs fall dramatically. That bears repeating. In mastery, performance increases exponentially, while costs fall dramatically. It accounts for how the best athletes, performers, artists, sages, and even warriors can blow our minds with what they do, inspire us, and serve as iconic frames of reference, while making it look easy, with grace and style. It is what differentiates the best from the rest, decisively.

 But what is Leadership Mastery? This used to be a tough question because, unlike athletes, performers, etc., leaders have not had a vision or path to mastery. So most have been trapped in excellence. The only exception would be if a leader had achieved mastery in another field and translated it somehow to his or her own leadership in an organization. This is extremely rare because most people, if they are masters in a field (for example golf, acting, painting, music, thinking, or inventing) stick to that field; it is their identity.

Like all mastery, Leadership Mastery is defined by exponentially increased performance and dramatically reduced costs. In organizational leadership we see more innovation, alignment, efficiency, sustainability, focus, capacity, integrity, return, growth, and vision, and less struggle for that extra increment of performance, as well as dramatically less of the financial and human costs that characterize the merely excellent organization. The masterful leader aligns more, inspires more, gets it right more often, sees more, creates more, and keeps himself or herself whole in mind, body and spirit in a way that is remarkable to all who observe, follow, or compete with them. They soar high, while appearing relaxed and ready for more. Leaders in Mastery put incremental growth and marginal change, achieved at a high cost, behind them once and for all. And so do their teams, organizations, and partners.

It’s not magic, not a put on. It’s not superhuman. It’s not the result of cutting a deal at the crossroads. But it is rare. And it is teachable and reachable because leaders now have a path to mastery. This blog, my keynote speaking, workshops, and work with clients all focus on doing exactly this. If you are tired of seeing excellent people and organizations pay a high price for incremantal growth and marginal change, you’ve already taken the first step. So welcome!