"Don't just get by. Get better!" - Futurist Jim Carroll
I meet a lot of marginal people.
They live marginal lives.
Chasing marginal goals.
With marginal ideas.
And keep achieving, well, marginal things!
What causes this? Part of it is that they just adopt a mindset of mediocrity - that's why I wrote the books!
I remember the situation at one agricultural talk - it was for a long-standing company in the industry. They were faced with unrelenting pressures on every front — input costs climbing faster than their yields, commodity prices swinging wildly from one season to the next, and financial challenges piling up. Drought or deluge could wipe out an entire year’s work in a matter of weeks. Global markets were their future and yet not in their control - their fortunes rose or fell on decisions made in trading pits half a continent away. (Fast forward a few years to today, and the global situation is different altogether!)
My talk focused on the key trends in the sector - key growth opportunities. Things like accelerating automation, faster science, the next generation, and other trends. But when you are in front of a crowd, you can read the room, and I could certainly read the room on this day. To me, it was a crowd rejecting much of what I was talking about as a path forward because they’d learned to settle for “good enough.” Why? because that felt safer than trying something new,.m and failing.
And that’s where the mindset of mediocrity takes hold. When you’ve been burned by weather extremes, when the bank’s watching your loans, when every harvest feels like a cliff edge, it’s tempting to stick with what you know. But what you know isn’t enough. I reminded them that breakthroughs don’t happen by tweaking yesterday’s ideas - they come when you refuse to accept marginal returns on marginal ideas. Because the alternative is a slow grind toward extinction.
Here's the thing about 'getting by.' It's a failure! Know these things:
- the status quo is no longer 'good enough. The landscape is littered with companies and careers that thought "average" was a strategy.
- complacency is the new corporate suicide. If you're not actively pushing the envelope, you're already sealed in it,
- growth isn't a project, it's oxygen! "Get better!" should be your mantra.
- action eats inaction for breakfast! Tomorrow demands forward motion, deliberate daily steps, and turning bold vision into tangible reality.
Continual improvement should be your goal. Know these things:
- simply maintaining the status quo isn’t enough. You have to push past comfort.
- there’s always room to sharpen skills, deepen knowledge, and broaden your impact.
- challenges aren’t just obstacles to endure. They are opportunities to chase
- progress is a choice you make every day, not something that happens by accident.
"Don't just get by, Get better!" isn't just a catchy phrase. It's a survival guide for the age of acceleration. It’s your daily gut check:
Are you coasting on fumes, or are you actively managing your way forward?
Jim Carroll’s new books, Embracing Mediocrity and Escaping Mediocrity, provide insight into the path of our marginality. Details are at mediocrity.jimcarroll.com