Hey friends,

My team and I have been working on new products and services lately, which had me thinking about what differentiates "meh" products from the ones that make us go "wow".

To be mediocre, to create “meh” products, isn’t what high-performers aspire to.

Yet after some early success, it’s where many of them find themselves—not due to a lack of ambition, but because they fall victim to their past successes.

With egos and reputations on the line, the pressure to outdo previous performance increases with each success.

How embarrassing will it be if this next launch doesn’t work out?
We’ll lose our customers’ trust if we let this happen.
And we’ll look like idiots to everyone.

This is how boldness and curiosity gets slowly but surely replaced by sure-bets.

And thus begins the first step towards mediocrity.

Where the stakes are so high that “what could be” has to make way for “what has to be.”

Where people stop asking, “wouldn’t it be cool if…” but instead ask, “wouldn’t it be more efficient if…”

And when entire teams (and their leaders) organize around the core questions around what’s realistic and efficient, what’s the surest way to hit their targets—then congratulations are in order, they now have a well-oiled machine.

Perfectly predictable. Perfectly safe. Perfectly mediocre.

So what’s the solve?

How do we keep mediocrity at bay?

This is where leaders need to lead the charge: Go back to beginner mind.

Amp up your own curiosity.

Challenge the status quo, question what’s possible.

Be open to being wrong.

Get your people to follow suit.

Disrupt the need for sure-bets, instead view everything as an experiment; you try something new, create a hypothesis, and you learn from what happens next.

Break the cultural assumption that only clueless people ask questions, and that competent one have all the answers.

And when it comes time to making the idea come to life and reality has to set in, the curiosity doesn’t have to end: “How can we make this happen? What can we try?”

Stay curious. Embrace wonder. Incentivizing boldness and learning is the antidote to mediocrity.

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This Week's Mind Diet

I've replayed this episode from Seth Godin's Akimbo podcast at least half a dozen times now.

If you're experiencing any creative blockages... I hope this will help you as it did me.

​There's No Such Thing As Writer's Block​

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Until next week!

Dee

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PS: If you have questions (or feedback), I wanna hear from you!

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