Episode Details

There are two options in life: greatness or mediocrity. But greatness seems so elusive, even so pompous. How do you call your work "great"? How do you even know or benchmark "greatness?". And can a small business achieve greatness or do you have to be a dominant player like Apple, Disney and Walmart. In this episode we get right to the root of greatness and how the book "Good to Great" by Jim Collins changed my life. But instead of the massive journey to greatness, this episode shows you a tiny path. A path most of us can manage with just a little bit of effort.

A life of mediocrity is hardly worth living. Here's the pathway to greatness.

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Useful Resources / To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/79 / / Email me at: sean@psychotactics.com / / Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza / / Magic? Yes, magic: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic

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Part 1: The Hedgehog Principle Part 2: Preserving the Core + Stimulating Progress Part 3: Big, Hairy Audacious Goal—The BHAG Right click here and 'save as' to download this episode to your computer.

5000bc: How to get reliable answers to your complex marketing problems Why Happiness Eludes You: 3 Obstacles That We Need To Overcome Find out: Do We Really Need To Start With Why?

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"This transcript hasn't been checked for typos, so you may well find some. If you do, let us know and we'll be sure to fix them."

Burnham was an architect—an extremely well known architect—in Chicago. And he'd been given a job like no other. He was expected to turn a boggy square mile into what would be the spotlight of the world. He was put in charge of the World's Columbian Exposition.

He just had one tiny problem—the Eiffel Tower. On March 31, 1889, Paris had had it's own Exposition. And it quickly surpassed the Washington Monument to become the then tallest man-made structure in the world. Burhnam had the unenviable job of surpassing the hoopla around the Eiffel Tower, but no one had a clue what to do.

"Make no little plans", he said to his team of engineers, but they could come up with little to rival the magnificence of the Eiffel Tower. Of course there were proposals: a tower garlanded with rails to distant cities, another tower from whose top guests would be pushed off in chairs (pretty much like today's bungee jumping). And Eiffel himself proposed an idea for the Chicago exposition—a bigger tower than the one in Paris. How could the Chicago Exposition outshine the now most famous monument in the world—the Eiffel Tower? It seemed almost impossible to come up with something that would rival the French monument. An engineer called Ferris has the answer.

The ideas were going nowhere and the Chicagoans were pulling their hair out, when a 33 year old engineer from Pittsburgh came up with an idea: how about a huge revolving steel wheel? He came up with sketches, added additional specifications and then shared the idea with Burnham.

But Burnham was not impressed. The slender rods of the wheel were too fragile. It would be madness to carry people to a height taller than the Statue of Liberty in such a fragile wheel. But Burnham wasn't just dealing with any ol' engineer. He was dealing with George Washington Gale Ferris Jr—who would forever be associate