Recently Seth Godin wrote:

"4% less does not get you 4% less.

Doing 4% less may very well get you 95% less.

That's because almost good enough gets you nowhere. No sales, no votes, no customers. The sad lie of mediocrity is the mistaken belief that partial effort yields partial results. In fact, the results are usually totally out of proportion to the incremental effort."

I couldn't agree more. Yet, I still see lots of mediocrity everywhere I turn. It makes you curious ...

Why do leaders - in these times of economic (and soon to be social) turmoil - still tolerate mediocrity in their staff?

Here are three consumer based examples of mediocrity I've noticed this week:

• The design effort that's gone into the Windows based personal computer my wife uses;
• The service provided me in a big hotel at Heathrow airport;
• The attempt to lure me back into the shops.

Surely computer designers (other than Apple) can produce something that doesn't look cheap and plastic. And, reception staff could welcome me with a genuine smile, not process me like checkout clerks. And, a high-street marketing team could get more creative than a 20% off sale, one day only.

Is the marketplace suffering from mediocre leadership?

Are business leaders really still so asleep (or so far up their corporate backsides) they aren't thinking about how to positively impact their customer's experience?

As a professional, in a service firm, one of your key roles is to wake leaders up. And, the tool you have for doing this is simple - the conversation. You must have conversations that lead others to take decisions. Your job as an advisor is to lead them to make commitments in the best interests of their organisations.

This is the sixth rule of instant impact.

Now consider this; You may be just one conversation away from winning, or losing, your best client.

And, that conversation isn't about your getting a project from them. No, it's about the ideas you have that could, quite literally, save the client's business.

Do you see things your client is missing out on? Do you see ways they could save money today? What ideas do you have your customer should be listening to? I'm not thinking about mediocre ideas that everyone else in your field might have. I'm thinking about your unique and authentic take on their future success.

Now ask yourself, am I ready to stand out and speak up? Am I going to be exceptional - or mediocre- in the way I lead the conversation that must be had?