Build up your baseline: We’re always establishing our baselines: every relationship, skill or capacity has some baseline and our most celebrated wins are usually the result of small spikes up from it. In this view, success is mostly a matter of small, sustained improvements over the long haul. Or, as Bezos put it: “all overnight success takes about 10 years.”

Another In any important activity, I try to be mindful where my baseline is, and look for easy ways to keep it trending up. Everyday interactions with the team, small ongoing process improvements, a habit of casually consuming the media your audience consumes—all these keep our baseline relationships, operational efficiency and cultural relevancy trending up. We can more reliably make the jump to great success from these higher, upward-trending baselines. PR offers many good examples: if you’re regularly doing the little things: sending b-day cards to all your media contacts & micro-influencers, getting quick behind-the-scenes iPhone videos from your photoshoots or product design process, then you can have big media wins when say, your product launch cycle comes. 

Of course, the most impactful baseline is often your employees’ aggregate baseline.

Last modified: April 12, 2025