Doing Common Things in An Uncommon Way

I was listening to an old Ed Mylett podcast episode the other day where the guest was Clemson football coach Dabo Sweeney. As Dabo explained his approach to creating a winning team culture that wins National Championships, he spent some time unpacking this quote from George Washington Carver…

“When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world.”

As Dabo explained,

“I took this quote, showed it to the team, and said this is how we’re going to do it… We’re gonna do the common things in an uncommon way. It starts with how we clean our locker room. Here’s how the locker needs to look when you walk away. When we get off the bus, there’s not going to be any trash for the bus driver. We’re going to clean the trash. When we land at the airport, no one’s going to get our luggage. We’re going to get our own luggage. When we go to the movie theater on Friday night, we’re going to leave it cleaner than when we got there. And we do. We bring blowers, and we blow it out.”

Dabo continued, “We’ve created this culture where we lost at Notre Dame, and we got a letter from Notre Dame saying they’ve never had anybody leave the locker room the way we left it. I read that to my team and said this is one of the most proud moments – we’d just lost the game in double overtime – I said, this is what it’s all about.”

Take a moment and apply this approach to the common things in your business. Do you bring excellence to these areas:

Do you communicate in an uncommon way?

Do you deliver your service in an uncommon way?

Do you make customers feel appreciated in an uncommon way?

Do you show up for one another on your teams in an uncommon way?

Do you handle your paperwork in an uncommon way?

Do you keep your space clean in an uncommon way?

Are you uncommon, and do you do your work with excellence – or are you just like everyone else?

Make no mistake about this. Even as I am writing this, I am thinking about how I show up for our clients and my teammates here at OrangeBall. In the spirit of full transparency, there are areas where I am uncommon, and others where I am common. As an agency striving to be uncommon, we still have work to do, and that’s the point. Becoming excellent and striving to be uncommon is a journey – one that begins with an awareness of what uncommon looks like.

The Takeaway

Every day, we choose how we’re going to show up in our work, from how responsive we’re going to be in our communication to how much we care about our customers and our teammates. Pick an area today where you feel like you’re common, and do one thing now to start your journey to become uncommon. Do that, and as the quote says, “You will command the attention of the world.”

One last thought… How can a little bit of “uncommon” command the attention of the world? It’s because so many of us often settle for common – it’s the easy path and requires less of us. That’s the beauty here. A little extra attention on becoming excellent and uncommon will quickly set you apart. Pick one thing, and focus your attention on becoming uncommon there.