All my childhood I have been told that practise makes perfect and I have tried to live my life by this saying. My first motivational talk I ever I gave was in fact titled practise makes perfect. Two months ago I realised that a lot of people’s lives are not perfect because of what they practise daily, a lot of businesses have failed because of what they practise every day. This realisation got me too start observing people who do well in the work that they are doing, what they do and how they do the work. I decided I was going to interview three people i know who have worked in high positions and here are three important aspects every successful businesses and manager and person should do.

1. Measure success against what you did yesterday: I have heard managers say don’t worry we are doing better than the other branch or the other departments. Looking at businesses or life this way is a very flawed, this is because the people you are competing with might just be really poor and all you are doing by competing with them is lowering your standard. You can only make progress if you are doing more today than you did yesterday, if you are doing the same things one day you will discover that the method you have been using are not perfect after all. Put yourself on the progress scale and measure how much you have grown in the last few months.
2. Set deadlines: a lot of people want to achieve great things but they do not set deadlines on when they need to do them. Having a deadline keeps your progress in checks. A lot of people want to measure progress in business or in their personal life but they don’t have any deadlines to achieve them hence a lot of them end up procrastinating. Moreover having deadlines in a work place keeps the team communicating to ensure they are meeting the deadline.
3. What is the end goal: It never stops to amaze me how many people I know who have worked for an organisation for more than two decades and still they have no idea how their work contributes to organisation. This results in employees competing with their colleagues instead of making their work better. It is very difficult to improve at something if you really don’t know the end of game of what you are doing. You have to be clear about what you want to achieve in your business and your life and have compelling reason why you have to achieve those goals.

After listening to these three aspects of success I concluded that practise does not make perfect but perfect practise makes perfect.