The apple and the worm
Good night story for performance experts
Once upon a time, there was a worm inside an apple. He was very proud of himself being the god of his world, shouting his name inside the tunnels created by himself, calling each tunnel and mansion in different names. Summer Palace Worm 1, Premium Highway Worm and etc.
Such a nice feeling! Awesome!
He was the god of his own world. Gradually, he forgot all his past. He could just remember all the effort that he put to create his own world. Full of himself. Full of praise of self-loving!
Day by the day the apple got rotten and finally it dropped from the tree. In the beginning the worm assumed that it was an earthquake but later he got out and found out a very bitter fact.
He saw thousands and thousands of his world hanging on each tree. Worlds that were bigger than his world in different colors, yellow, green, red.
Wow!
He was not the god. He was just a worm. That was all!
In our career journey, sometimes we forget who really we are. Sometimes we just assume that we are god but we aren't indeed.
This usually happens to two groups of us:
- Entrepreneurs and owners of start-ups who suddenly grow very fast with almost no experience of bad days.
- Those who stay in one company for a long time without networking and bench-marking their activities. Step by step they get full of themselves and they make fool of themselves.
If this is the danger then what the solution could be?
I believe young entrepreneurs should read a lot about what I call it bad days in business. We should be always positive and powerful but we shouldn't forget that there are people who are better than us. They can chase us, copy us and do things better than us.
And senior managers and leaders in corporate world should not forget that if by their effort smartness or building trust in higher management they could climb up the ladder of responsibility in their company, there is always the possibility that in lower levels there are people that are better than them. There are companies that are doing better.
Getting more and more successful is admirable but we shouldn't underestimate the existence of other apples ;))