How Titans Beat Irrelevance | Robin Sharma

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This is Robin Sharma. Welcome to this mastery session. This mastery session is called How Titans Beat Irrelevance. In this world where there was so much globalization and there's so much competition and there's so much societal disruption, I think you owe it to yourself and to your craft and to your best game and to your customers and to the organization that you work with to avoid irrelevance at all costs. And here's how you do it. I'm going to start off with an anecdote. A few weeks ago, I was in a city, and I went to one of my favorite hotels. And this hotel was sort of the iconic hotel of the city. And I love going there because it's a. It's a lovely hotel. I get very inspired. The service was magnificent. And they used to do everything at World Class. Now here's what happened. I think they might have fallen in love with their own press releases. Here's what happened. I think there was probably such a lineup to the front door. Metaphorically speaking, they fell in love with their own success. You know, and there's a model I teach at my flagship event that I do every year. It's called the Titan Summit. It's become really famous around the world. You've probably heard about it. And the model I teach is, is the Titans Decline. And it really speaks to what I'm talking about, how you have a hotel that was once iconic. You have, let's say, a heavyweight championship boxer that was once a Titan. You have a brand that was once world class. But it's a very slippery slope from world class to irrelevance. And that's why so few performers and so few organizations are legendary. I mean, it's pretty hard to get to World Class. It's even harder to sustain it for an entire series of decades until you get to a point of legendary. And so this hotel was really popular. And I think when you are most successful, that's when you're most vulnerable. When you become really popular in your marketplace, it's really easy to stop doing the very things that made you popular and successful. That is one of the key things I really want you to think about and almost deconstruct in your mind what is your winning formula? And how can you continually be innovating around your winning formula so you don't fall in love with your success? I mean, success breeds complacency. Success breeds arrogance. It's almost human nature. I mean, you see it with a lot of heavyweight champions of business, heavyweight champions in sports, heavyweight champions in science or the arts, you know, they get to a place where the world is revering them and recognizing their mastery, and they stop doing the very things that made them world class. They become complacent, they become arrogant, they stop learning, they stop getting up early, they stop being obsessively attentive around the details. And so I want you to really think about the Titans decline. You know, if you're at world class or you're making your ascent to world class, you really want to talk to your team and you want to spend a lot of time thinking about how do we avoid this descent into irrelevance? And so back to this hotel. On the last day I was there, it was a completely different user experience. I walked in, there was no real greeting. I couldn't feel any sincere heartfelt appreciation for me being there. Then I said, you know, I'd love a reservation at your place for dinner, the restaurant, you know, nice farm to table place. And she said, yeah, we're going to try our best to do that for you. And then she was able to do it, and she said, we were able to fit you in, which really didn't make me feel like I was a valued guest. And then the user experience at least was very consistent. You know, there was a patio, a terrace I had, and at about 6:30 in the morning, I look out the window and I see the gardener working on the shrubbery of my terrace. Like, no privacy whatsoever. And then I had a meal out on the terrace and I asked for the tray to be cleaned after I left for the evening. When I came back at 10 o', clock, the tray was still there and it just went on and on and on. And so that hotel was once revered. It really once was iconic. It once was the titan of the entire city. But because they lost their fire, because they rested on their laurels. This idea about a wreath or crown of laurels comes from the Greek champions. And you might not know this, and I recently learned this, but what would happen when there was a Greek champion? There would be someone from the crowd, someone that he really, really, really trusted. And that person would actually place the crown on the champion's head, whispering in their ear, quietly, remember, you are human. And that was sort of a motto or a mantra to remind that champion to stay hungry, stay foolish, stay in the game, keep the fire in the belly, not rest on the laurels. If they wanted to remain a champion and not become irrelevant, I'm going to leave you with a final story. One of my heroes is Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, Sam Walton, understood you always want to avoid the Titans decline. So there was this group of Brazilian business people and they wanted to study the great American entrepreneurs. And so they sent all of these letters to many of the great titans of industry. And they said, we'd love to come to your shop, we'd love to come to your organization, we'd love to understand how you have become so successful in your marketplace. Hardly anyone replied to these Brazilian business people. Sam Walton took the time to reply. He said, sure, I'd love for you to come and see what Walmart is all about. When they showed up at Walmart, Sam Walton was asking them question after question after question after question. And of course, he shared his information as well. And so they were so interested and they were so appreciative of Sam Walton, they said, you know, you should come down to Brazil sometime and check out what we do. He said, fine. So Sam Walton went down to Brazil and Sam Walton found a grocery store in Brazil and he wanted to learn some ideas because he saw that the aisles were a little wider than the Walmart shops that he had created. And so the Brazilian business people, later that night they got a phone call and they said, there is an elderly man in jail who says he knows you and he wants your help to get out of the Brazilian jail. And they said, what are you talking about? And they later found out that Sam Walton was in jail. You see, the shopkeepers in the grocery store didn't understand why this elderly man was on the floor measuring the aisles in their grocery store. So they called the police who arrested Sam Walton. True story. And the Brazilian business people bailed him out of jail. Avoid the titans decline Be like Sam Walton even when you are an icon get down on your knees get dirty around your craft Never stop learning Never stop trying to own your game. Hi, this is Robin Sharman. I hope you received great value from this mastery session. If you'd like to receive potent training videos, blog posts, learning tools and information on my two live events, Personal Mastery Academy, and my flagship four day experience, the Titan Summit, go ahead and visit robinsharma.com.