The Best You Can Be

The concept of being the best you can be is not about being the best compared to someone else. Success and failure are widely misunderstood. At an individual level, Success in sport is not about winning premierships, indeed many premiership players contributed very little to that team success on or off the field. In business, many employees "coast along" without contributing much to the organisation success. In family, I have seen many instances of a family unit being held together almost entirely by one person with the other playing little or no role in making the family a family.

Before I am inundated with caustic commentary, I am not dismissing the collective vision of success, merely writing this article at an individual level on the basis that an individual can really only absolutely control themselves and their part to play within a larger collective unit.

Terry Wills Cooke - another great mentor and friend is the former chair of our business. Terry is another to have developed catch cries and simply worded lessons to live by. He used to describe a concept known by the Acronym CAMS. Within this principle, there is capabability which simply defined is the power or ability to do something. If you are incapable of doing something, then you will not do it. His colloquial way of explaining this was that a person with no arms is unlikely to ever work as a bricklayer - they will not be capable of it.

Aptitude is the second layer. Aptitude is the natural tendency or mental facility to do something. We have all seen kids with aptitude to do some things better than other things. That is not to say they can't learn other things as you never say never, but they are going to find it more difficult in areas where they don't have natural aptitude.

The third layer is Motivation. Motivation is the enthusiasm, desire and willingness to do something.

Finally - there are skills. Skills are able to be learnt, being the process and sequence to achieve a particular task.

Terry often described two categories for any activity. The bottom and the top. These two categories intersect. It is possible for the top of the bottom group to be better than the bottom of the top. It is not, however possible, for the top of the bottom group to be better than the top of the top as the latter category is superior when equally motivated due to greater capability or aptitude.

In employment - one ought to employ capability, aptitude and motivated people above people with pre-existing skills as skills can be taught. Employ the first three and teach the skills and you might be nearer the top of the top.

In sport - one ought to select capability, aptitude and motivated people. Too often I see teams seduced by potential. Potential is something given to you by someone else (parents). Performance is what you do for yourself. I always had the philosophy of selecting motivated, capable people with aptitude even if not yet completely skilled. My sense was that if the highly skilled saw motivation and aptitude being rewarded, then positive behaviours would be displayed. If "talent" was all that was required, then corners would be cut and in the big moments the lack of character would come home to roost.

In life - being the best you can be is 24/7. You can't choose your days. This means a consistency, a standard and a holistic approach that is hard. Nothing worth doing is ever easy. If it was, everyone would do it. Being the best you can be is the antithesis to being "normal" or "ordinary". Aspire NOT to be "normal" as normal is average and average by definition is the midway point between excellence and hopelessness. I'm sure you will agree, it is not an aspiration to be average. Think big, expect more and be the best you can be at whatever it is that you do.