Raising The Bar!
By Jim “Gymbeaux” Brown, April
1, 2010 Revised June 2025
What does “raising the bar” really mean? Pulled this definition off the Internet:
You have a bar (FIGURATIVELY!). It represents a STANDARD, something to get
over (at this point you may well imagine the high jump or pole vault contest in
track and field). Once achieved this
standard remains unchanged over a period of time. Then someone “raises the bar” tries again and
succeeds. All of a sudden more is
expected to meet the “new” standard.
This little bit extra could be absolutely anything. That’s the beauty of the concept. Use your imagination. Before anyone could go to university! Now they had raised the bar; you needed to be
intelligent! In 2025 that no longer
seems to be the case. Look at all of the
ongoing riots where students, as we have been TOLD by the media, are engaged in
“mostly peaceful protests (riots). There
is no obvious sign of intelligence on display at any of these riots!
I originally
wrote this Nugget in April of 2010.
I should have known. I read the
book The Naked Communist in the mid-1990s and
that is where I learned about the 45 goals The Communist Party USA (yes it is a
party within American and yes, it is still alive and active.). Goal number 17 stands out amongst all of the
goals. It reads, “Get control of
schools. Use them as transmission belts for
Socialism and Communist propaganda.
Soften the curriculum. Get
control of teachers associations (unions).
Put the Party Line in textbooks!”
This one goal, established in the late 1950s IS the key to what we
are now seeing throughout America.
Instead of “raising the bar”, a topic discussed in the original Nugget,
I have sadly learned that lowering the bar is also a possibility that I would have
heretofore thought unimaginable before 2025.
The Communist Party USA seems to have accomplished their primary goal of
brainwashing students beginning at the earliest of grades and then advance as
they are promoted from one grade to another.
Then, just as planned, these students go on to college and they become
the teachers and professors of the next generations of students thus promoting
and enhancing the Socialist/Communist agendas and most of us just sat back and
watched it happen.
Back to the original Nugget, I truly believe it remains true and
optimistic as it should be!
Using the high jump as an
example, it was not that long ago that anyone who could jump over 6 feet was
considered a record holder at that height.
Over time, techniques and equipment improved, people in general became
larger, faster and more agile and now high jumpers jump well over 7 feet. One
high jumpmer, Dick Fosbury in 1968 invented a totally new way to perform the
High Jump. It became known as The
Fosbury Flop, proving that there is always a way to “improve the mouse trap.” The Fosbury Flop became the accepted form
ever since. The same is true for pole
vaulters. Each year athletes “raise the
bar” ever so slightly and jump higher and higher. Yours truly was a pole vaulter in high school
in the early 1960s. The pole I used was
about 3” in diameter and about 10’ long and as ridged as possible. If you could vault 10’, you were considered
an elite pole vaulter. Then came the
fiberglass pole that whipped around like a fishing pole. As you planted this new pole, it would bend
to the point of almost breaking and then like a sling shot, shoot the vaulter
up over the bar that now exceeds 17’ or higher.
Things change. Goals and
objectives change. Techniques
change. Sadly, most people remain
stagnant in the past and refuse to even consider a different way of doing
things.
"If you continue to do the same things
the same way you always did them,
you'll continue to get the same results"
…Henry Ford,
some contribute it to Alfred Einstein
It has been my sporting
experience that there are self-imposed barriers. For example, I can remember when people
thought no one would ever run a 4-minute mile, jump over 6 feet high or pole
value over 15 feet. All these records
have fallen. Did you notice? “4” minute mile? “6” feet?
“15” feet? People tend to
establish barriers at almost predictable measurements. In golf people talk about “breaking 100”
meaning they shoot 99 or less; or breaking 90, or 80. You never hear someone say they are going to
break 85 for example.
Now think about the Law of
Attraction. You tend to bring into
your life that which you think of most.
Therefore. if everyone (figuratively) says you cannot run a mile in less
than 4 minutes that is what most people thought about. A very small number of people were not
restricted by such thinking and tried anyway.
Along comes Roger Banister and he ran the first sub 4-minute
mile. Once he did it, it only took a
couple of weeks before the next person and then the next person and then the
next person ran sub 4-minute miles. What
is the next barrier? Actually, it became
the 3 minute, 50 second mile. Who will be the next runner to raise the bar and
just how fast will he or she be able to run?
In golf, if you typically shoot
between 95 and 100, why would you set a goal to break 90? Why not set a goal to break 95, then 94, and
then 93 and before you know it you are breaking 90. Then what?
88? 85?
Before you can “raise the bar”
what must you know? You must know where
the bar is set FOR YOU (either by yourself or someone else) right
now. What is the “acceptable” standard,
whether it is in sports, business or life in general? What do you accept as your standard? How did you come to accept that particular
standard? Who set it; did you or did
someone set it for you? Why did you come
to accept whatever it is you currently accept?
Can you do better?
Now there’s a question for the
ages; can you do better? Well, can
you? Is there anything you currently do
that cannot be done better? If that is
so, what is keeping you from doing better?
Let’s count the reasons:
- You
don’t really believe you can do any better.
- Someone,
maybe the voice inside your head, has convinced you can’t do any better.
- You
believe that if you do better someone, maybe even you, might expect you to
do better every time; not just this time.
- Maybe
you relate doing better to being compensated for what you do or, “I’m not
getting paid to do this.”
- You
believe that the more I do the more I will be given to do therefore why do
more or better?
- Unconsciously
you don’t know there is a “better” to actually do; what you are doing is
acceptable (to whom?).
- One of
my personal favorites is “Close enough for government work!” Therefore, there is no incentive to do
better.
- What’s
in it for me if I do better?
- No one
is really looking, why go the extra mile?
- Another
one of my personal favorites as this applied to me in high school back
in…… If I do better, I will be
considered a geek and people like those on the football and basketball
teams will not want to include me in their activities. Sound familiar? Hope not; it was for me.
Can you come up with more? I know I sound like a broken record when it
comes to the 80/20 rule but it applies to raising the bar as it applies to
everything in life. If statistics could
be maintained, it would be my guess that 80% of people would accept the
standards that 80% of the people currently experience. While the 80% are doing whatever they are
doing, what are the remaining 20% doing?
I can say with certainty, they are doing what the 80% are doing plus a
“little bit more” than what the 80% are doing.
Why would anyone ever want to be
in the 80% group who are obviously satisfied with the status quo? What is to be gained by being like everyone
else? It may take a while to answer that so I’ll wait…
A picture can be worth a thousand
words OR MORE! Look at the following picture;
what do YOU see?
WHAT DO YOU SEE? It is not what you might first think. The obvious answer is that they can’t envision
putting the round wheels onto the cart making it roll easier and you would be
correct. The not-so-obvious answer is
that the four characters ARE SATISFIED with their progress and then fail
to think “outside the box” to enhance their efforts. This one graphic is a tremendous metaphor for
people who refuse to consider that there may be a better way and that someone
other than themselves may be the one or ones that know what that better way
is. People who have an open mind are
typically people who read, who take courses, who teach courses and are always
looking to build “a better mouse trap”
which of these two definitions of people are you?
See if you can equate to my
logic. When I became an instructor in
the U. S. Coast Guard I was tasked with teaching people how to complete their
paperwork, imagine that for those who know me.
We would actually grade people on how accurate they completed a form(s)
or process an event. Students would get
an A, B, C, D and F just like millions of students for hundreds of years. The first thing I did was change the grading
system. Instead of having a student
prepare a form and get a grade of 70% or a C, I would mark the areas of the
form(s) the student failed to properly prepare or calculate and then return it
to the student not with the correct answers but simply the areas that were
incorrect. It was up to the student,
with an open book, to properly complete the form and return it for review. First consider my logic. Once these students are “in the field”
working, they are not expected to work totally from memory. They will have resources they can use like
manuals and instructions. Therefore it
is equally as vital that they be assessed on how well they can follow the
instructions that those resources provide. I would first mark up the form(s) and if
incorrect, return them to the student to try again. It was the same with every form and every
procedure. The student would be graded
not on each form but rather how many times it took him or her to get it
correct.
I can remember it as if it were
yesterday when the Training Officer called me into his office to ask me what on
earth I was doing. He called me
crazy. I told him that a passing grade
for the school was 70% and he agreed; it was 70%. Then I said, “Sir, if I were teaching
students to be dental technicians, would you want someone who passed with a 70%
grade working in your mouth or would you want someone who did it right the
first time working in your mouth?”
Before he could answer I then asked, “Sir, let’s look at it another
way. If I were teaching payroll and
accounting, would you want someone calculating your pay check who passed the
school with a 70% or would you prefer someone who knew how to do it right the
first time?”
The silence was deafening! He agreed.
The only problem we then faced was how many times would we permit a
student to keep trying to get it right before we came to the conclusion that he
or she was just not cut out for what was being taught. After all, not everyone has the motivation
and intelligence to be a brain surgeon, plumber or pay clerk. I can tell you that the quality of the
graduating students improved when they understood that the standard, or where
the “bar was set” was what they were expected to achieve when performing their
work. Anything less is unacceptable;
anything more, commendable!
Whenever you are performing work,
providing a service, or providing a product for someone else, where do you set
your bar? Do you set it where the 80%
reside or do you set it where the 20% flourish?
I’m just asking. You tell
me. If you think that the work you do is
satisfactory or “good enough for _______”, is it really? If the shoe were on the other foot and you
were the customer and someone else was performing at the level they considered
as satisfactory, would it be satisfactory for you?
Is it possible to set the bar too
high? Is it possible to run a 4-minute
mile? Absolutely! Is it possible to run
a 3-minute mile? Not yet!
Here is another way to think
about it. I took my one and only hot air
balloon ride with a pilot and one other person, a lot older than I was. It was magnificent but the actual ride is for
another story. It was getting dark and
the wind had taken us north over forests instead of south over clear
pastures. With the sun setting we were
definitely in trouble and you could sense that in the change of attitude and
presence of the balloon pilot.
“There”, he shouted as he pointed
to a very small clearing surrounded by a fence and with one large oak tree in
the center. He let the air out of the
balloon as much as he safely could and we descended so fast I think it was a
little more than we safely should have.
We landed very hard and the basket turned on its side and dragged us for
quite a distance but we managed to get on the ground, we did not hit the tree
or the fence. We had made it slightly
bruised but alive.
But wait, we landed in a coral
not a pasture and there was a very large and very angry bull in the coral. We were in BIG trouble. Like the joke you hear about one hiker
shifting to his running shoes not to out run the bear but to out run his fellow
hiker, I felt I was faced with that choice.
Neither the pilot nor the passenger was as young as I was and neither
one able to out run the bull. With only
seconds to spare, I decided that I could attract the bull’s attention and get
him to chase me while the other two could get to safety on the other side of
the fence. I had one chance and that was
to beat the bull to the oak tree. Screaming
as I ran to get the bull’s attention plus the fact that I was scared to death.
I began a bee-line to the tree with the bull on my tail, literally. It was really getting dark but I could see a
low hanging branch about 10 feet high and if I could only reach that branch. I
could escape the bull.
Running as fast as I could and to
this day I remember the heat of bull breath on my neck, that’s an exaggeration
but I swear I could feel it. As I came
closer to the tree I jumped with all my power to grab hold of that life-saving
branch.
Since I am telling you this
story, you can safely assume that the bull did not kill me. As I said, I ran faster than I had ever run
and I jumped higher than I had ever jumped – I missed the branch; after all it
was over 10 feet in the air. But much to
my surprise, I caught it coming down.
Most of that story is true and
the part about catching the branch on the way down is not but it serves my
purpose in this Nugget. It is perfectly
permissible to shoot for the moon and it is perfectly permissible not to make
it because who knows what star you might latch onto on the way up or down. The standard or the bar should be
perfection. Anything less is like the
student passing with 70%.
I have one question for everyone
who reads this Nugget. Would you want a
dentist working in your mouth who obtained his or her dental degree with a
grade of 70%? I’ll wait for your answer…
When you have a position where
people rely on you and your failure could cost them money or as was in the case
of the Coast Guard even their life, it is incumbent on you not to score a 70%
but to score a 100%; every time!
Remember, if the shoe were on the other foot. you would expect nor would
you accept anything less than 100%, am I not right on this?
Never accept ordinary or the minimum because ordinary and/or the minimum
will never make you great; it will only put you in the 80%. More importantly, you cannot expect
others to give you 100% if you do not expect the same from yourself when
working for another person’s best interests.
ORDINARY WILL NOT MAKE YOU GREAT!
ALWAYS SET YOUR BAR HIGHER THAN WHAT
OTHERS EXPECT!
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