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the next five minutes

Florian Hollender

Florian Hollender

— 1 min read
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Tom Peters has been all about "Excellence" for a few decades now, and I've been following/ reading/ thinking about his points for twenty of those years. If you don't know Tom Peters: you are in for a ride. If he was using a typewriter, every one of his letters would be embossed, legible from behind even. He has so much energy comping through his writing and his visual style that people like Seth Godin seem awfully chill in comparison, and the presentations he shares freely on his website really count as performance art.

By nature, Tom Peters is an immensely quotable guy. One that I love is this:

Excellence = the next five minutes.

let that sink in. Excellence is the next five minutes. Excellence is in the seemingly ordinary things, and the special moments inbetween - in whatever you do. Or it is not. That's how I understand Tom's point. If you strive for excellence, the way you do this is by striving for it NOW. And again, and again. You don't wait for the special moments to arrive - then you won't have any training. You won't be in the mindset. You won't have created the culture. You won't have a common understanding with your colleagues. It's "carpe diem" as a business fable.

Today, some "ordinary" moments where in hindsight I had a chance at excellence (and it grows bigger and bigger and bigger the more I think about it):

  • Saying good morning to team members
  • Getting the conference table chairs back in order after finishing the meeting
  • The chat with my daughter on the way to school
  • Shaving
  • Organizing my ToDo's for the day
  • Delegating an admin task
  • Holding eye contact in a conference call
  • Conversation with my lunch date
  • ...

What do your next five minutes look like? How would they look if you made them excellent?

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