Raising the Bar

Good morning friends, it’s good to be with you again this Tuesday. It’s a Tuesday that’s winding down – the end of a financial year, appraisals and assessments, etc and I was wondering what I could talk to you about on this ultimate Tuesday of this financial year.

This English idiom came to mind: ‘Raising the Bar’ and while this may have nothing to do with an evening tipple, it has everything to do with setting a higher standard. The etymology of raising the bar comes from the athletic field of pushing harder, striving or doing something better.


I don’t know how athletic you are. I have always enjoyed sports. I love cricket and have played cricket, hockey and many other sports. I didn’t do too well on the athletic field, track or field events. In fact, I remember to my chagrin, my last year in high school, I was house captain and I decided to enter the 1500 meter run. By the time I finished 700 m, my legs were pulling. I couldn’t go anywhere but decided I couldn’t quit and so I kept going and stayed the course. As I finished, I found everybody cheering and thought – pretty good for me, getting here and people excited about it. But only later I realized that they were cheering me so that I could finish the race and they could start the next one. You see, I was holding up the next race.

That was my only foray into track and field but I’ve enjoyed high jump. Haven’t been a high jumper but have enjoyed watching the high jump. It thrills me to see men and women who can take 4 or 5 steps to the high jump and then jump way above their height and you raise the bar on the high jump stick each time. It’s fascinating because over a period of time, men and women have continued to jump higher and higher. In the 1900s the high jump record was 6.56 feet and today the record stands at 8 feet 0.5 inches and that’s been there since 1999. This has to do with each person trying to push harder and push himself or herself to the limit to raise the bar even more.

As I read about high jump and raising the bar, I found that each time it has been raised, there has been a new system that has come in. I came across this in a book that I was reading titled ‘Hope Is Not a Method: Leadership Lessons for Business from the Transformation of America’s Army’ by Gordon R. Sullivan and Michael V. Harper. In it the authors talk about high jump and interestingly they also say that each time the technique changed from scissors to Western roll to straddle and finally when Dick Fosbury introduced the Fosbury Flop in 1968, there was a kind of a quantum leap (and the pun is intended here) in the way people jump and the marks that they left.

As I looked at it I thought that there was a lesson in that for us; that as we constantly try to improve on the things that we are doing, there are two ways that that can happen. One is that we can continue to let the process that we are linked to, evolve into a better process; that we can keep pushing it and refining it and reshaping it and it keeps going up but it goes up incrementally. But when it really moves is when the process is transformed. When the scissors gave way to the Western roll or straddle (if we can use the metaphor of the high jump) that’s when the gap widened.

Then I thought to myself that it was so similar to our everyday lives. Some of us are born to refine a process, some of us can take a process and begin to fine tune it and raise the bar on that particular process and some of us are called to transform that process, to make it a new process. I think it has to do with our capabilities, the way we are wired – whether we are left brain or right brain people. Left brain people will typically be able to take something and fine tune it in such a way that it keeps improving and right brain people are creative people. They can take something and transform and make something new.

But each one is able to take something that they have and make it better. That’s the heart of who we are, that we must continue to redefine ourselves, we must continue to excel, we must continue to find new ways of doing things and doing them better because if we remain in the status quo, then chances are that we will get passed over in the corporate set up. But as we continue to reinvent ourselves, we continue to do things well and better and bring freshness to the things that we do, then we become a greater asset to the people around us.

In our Bible (the Parable of the Talents – Matthew 25:14-30) there’s a story of a man who was going on a journey and he gave his men 5 talents, 2 talents and 1 talent respectively. The one who had 5 talents took it and invested it and made it into 10 talents. The one who had 2 did the same and made it 4. The one who had 1, just kept it and didn’t do anything about it. When the man returned, he applauded the one who had 5 talents and made it 10 and applauded the one who had 2 and made it 4. But he chastised the one who had 1 and didn’t do anything about it.

That’s a caricature of how God deals with us. Each one of us on this call is uniquely put together. We have a unique DNA that is not replicated by anybody else in this world. And God has said to each one of us, “In you I have put something unique that only you can do.” And that’s what you bring, the value that you bring into the company or the people around you. The onus is on each one of us to be able to say, “I will take this particular skill and I will hone it; either I will improve it or I will transform it but I will not let it be the way it was when I got it.”

That I believe is the challenge for us this morning as we look at a new year that is coming upon us. What can we do about ourselves, the gifts, the talents that God has given so that we can make it better? Do I need to read more? Do I need to study more? Do I need to get myself better used to the technology that is available? But allowing ourselves to stay in that one position without doing anything about it, is not an acceptable place to be in.

And so my challenge to each one of you on this call is to look at who you are, the one thing that defines you, that you can do well and hone that skill. Either let that process evolve into something better or take it and transform it, transcend it and make it something better, but don’t accept the status quo in your life.

God Bless You All.