The apple and the worm

Good night story for performance experts

Once upon a time, there was a worm inside an apple. He was very proud of himself being the creator of his world, shouting his name inside the tunnels dug by himself, calling each tunnel and mansion different names. Summer Palace, Premium Highway and etc.

Such a nice feeling! Awesome!

He was the God of his own world. Gradually, he forgot all his past. He could just remember all the effort that he put to create his one and only world. Full of himself. Full of praise of self-loving!

Day by day, as the apple got more holes from inside, it got rotten and finally it dropped from the tree. Worm, now very confused and absolutely unaware of the fact that he himself would have anything to do with the apple falling, got out and found out a very bitter truth.

He saw around him hundreds and hundreds of similar worlds. Some of them were lying on the grass just like his, some of them were hanging on trees. Worlds that were bigger and shinier than his one, worlds that had different colors from yellow to green and red. He was not the God. He was just a worm. That was all.

In our career journey, sometimes we forget who really we are. Sometimes we just assume that we are The Creators but we aren't indeed.

This usually happens to two groups of us:

• Entrepreneurs and owners of start-ups who suddenly grow very fast with almost no experience of bad days.
• Those who stay in one company for a long time without networking and bench-marking their activities. Step by step they get full of themselves and they make fool of themselves.

If this is the danger then what the solution could be?

We believe young entrepreneurs should read a lot about what we call a bad days in business. We should be always positive and powerful but we shouldn't forget that there are people who are better than us. They can chase us, copy us and do things better than us.

And senior managers and leaders in corporate world should not forget that if by their effort smartness or building trust in higher management they could climb up the ladder of responsibility in their company, there is always the possibility that in lower levels there are people that are better than them. There are companies that are doing better.

Getting more and more successful is admirable but we shouldn't underestimate the existence of other apples.