Verbs

Are you focused on the verb of performance—the actions and habits that drive progress—or on the noun, the results themselves? Leaders and organisations that sustain excellence elevate the verb, focusing on the performance system over a single destination.

Turning a noun into a verb shifts mindsets. For example, adding “-ism” to the word ‘medal’ transforms the outcome into a practice and a purpose. Repeat medallism is the commitment to high standards, growth, and mastery. Carol Dweck’s work on growth mindset reinforces this approach: some people focus on proving, while others focus on improving. A medal might represent “proving,” while medallism captures the continuous path to sustained excellence and improvement. When medallism is most effective, it is distributed across the entire team or organisation. Few can win the actual medal, but everyone in the system can embrace the verb of medallism in their work. When an organisation aligns around the goal of polishing medallism, it creates a collective lift and a new level of performance.

In both sport and business, medals and profits are metrics. The value of any metric is that it reflects the culmination of the system at the finish. A win captures a moment, but medallism encompasses the system, culture, habits, and behaviours. It’s a shift from a window of success to sustained, repeatable excellence. Championship-capable leaders dedicated to repeated high performance celebrate outcomes, but their deeper focus is inspiring and cultivating medallism—a dedication to growth, standards, and polish that elevates each performance by every individual on the way to any medal.

In my experience working with teams and organisations, those who have won without medallism in their culture often find it difficult to sustain that success. Medallism is the long game, the deeper perspective. As one athlete shared with me after winning her first gold medal: “I’m proud, but I know winning once is easier than winning twice; it means my routines and processes need to be rock-solid.” Exactly. In the long game, systems sustain excellence. And high-performance systems, built with the tone of medallism, are the backbone of teams and organisations that reach their objectives and podiums again and again.

An important distinction in championship-capable systems is that they operate a culture of “medal-ism,” not “medal-wasm.” They repeatedly evaluate practices and processes to polish the gold. What served well in the past may no longer be fit for purpose. Many oscillating performers get stuck here, repeating old practices that worked “back then” but no longer fit their current performance system.

Look around you—is medallism evident throughout your performance environment? It could be the trigger to elevate your game.

Go well,

Richard

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