Audacious Move™ of the Week
Every week I share one Audacious Move™—a bold decision, hard-earned lesson, or unconventional idea drawn from decades of real-world business experience.
Bold Decisions Create Extraordinary Businesses.
I hope it helps you create yours.
Forget Best Practices. Create Next Practices™
Every industry is obsessed with “Best Practices”.
Study the leaders.
Copy what works.
It sounds smart.
It’s also the fastest way to become invisible.
The moment everyone adopts a best practice, it stops being an advantage.
It becomes the new standard.
The price of admission.
You can’t become extraordinary by mastering ordinary.
Best Practices Create Sameness
I’ve never believed benchmarking creates greatness.
It creates sameness.
Benchmarking teaches you how to catch up.
It never teaches you how to lead.
When you benchmark, you’re chasing yesterday.
When everyone follows the same playbook, everyone ends up looking the same.
That’s not strategy.
That’s imitation.
Next Practices™ Invent Tomorrow
The organizations that win don’t copy what works.
They create what comes next.
Best Practices earn you a seat at the table. Next Practices™ let you own the table.
Throughout my career, I wasn’t interested in being better than the competition.
I wanted to be The ONLY One™.
That meant asking a completely different question.
Not, “What are competitors doing?”
But, “What could customers experience that they’ve never experienced before?”
Innovation isn’t about inventing new technology.
It’s about inventing new value.
Become the ONLY One™
Next Practices™ are created one bold decision at a time.
They can be surprisingly simple.
* Say YES!™ when everyone else says no.* Eliminate dumb rules customers hate.
- Create dazzling experiences people remember.
- Let customers architect your internal rules.
- Solve customer problems rather than try to enforce company policies.
Eventually competitors will copy you.
Good.
Your competitive advantage is always temporary.
Which means your next competitive advantage should already be under construction.
Organizations that rely on best practices become followers.
Organizations that relentlessly create
Next Practices™ become leaders.
Make Your Next Audacious Move™
Stop benchmarking.
Start inventing.
Create value your competitors haven’t imagined.
Become The ONLY One™.
That’s how markets are led.
That’s how extraordinary businesses grow.
Now that’s an Audacious Move™.
What’s Your Next Audacious Move™?
Reading ideas is easy.
Acting on them, however, is what creates extraordinary businesses.
BE DiFFERENT or be dead™ is more than a philosophy—it’s about making the bold decisions others won’t.
Related: Career Growth Starts With One Move Most Professionals Never Make
