Ban Average

Have you ever wondered why certain products inspire cult-like devotion while others—perfectly decent alternatives—barely register in the public consciousness?

Consider Brompton, the iconic British folding bicycle manufacturer. Their bikes aren’t the lightest. They’re not the fastest. They don’t have the most gears or the sleekest appearance. Yet Brompton owners don’t just like their bikes—they evangelise them. They form clubs. They get tattoos. They willingly pay premium prices.

Why? Because Brompton made one dimension of their product extraordinary: the folding mechanism. That singular focus created a bicycle that collapses into a package so compact, so elegantly, and so reliably that it transformed urban commuting. This single point of excellence generates enough gravitational pull to overcome acceptable-but-unexceptional performance in other areas.

Now contrast this with the dozens of “balanced” folding bikes that litter the market—slightly lighter, marginally cheaper, a touch more features—and yet create zero emotional connection with riders. They’re perfectly adequate across all dimensions and memorable in none.

This pattern repeats across every industry: the magnetic pull of focused excellence versus the invisibility of balanced mediocrity.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth most business books won’t tell you:

Average has no gravitational pull. None. Zero. Being decent at everything means being magnetic in nothing.

The world doesn’t reward balanced mediocrity. It rewards unbalanced excellence.

The Attraction Physics of Excellence

Think about the restaurants you recommend to friends. The products you evangelise online. The services you can’t stop talking about. I guarantee they’re not the ones that score 7/10 across the board. They’re the ones that deliver a 10/10 in something specific—even if other aspects might only merit a 6.

This isn’t just subjective observation. It’s commercial physics.

The relationship between quality and attraction isn’t linear—it’s exponential. A 10% improvement over competitors creates virtually no gravitational advantage. A 10x improvement in even one dimension creates a gravitational field that pulls customers, talent, and opportunities into your orbit.

Why? Because our brains are wired to notice and remember extraordinary experiences. We’re surrounded by adequacy. Bombarded by it. We’ve evolved sophisticated mental filters to screen out the unremarkable. Excellence breaks through those filters.

When Southwest Airlines focused on creating an extraordinary boarding experience while offering merely adequate food, they weren’t making a mistake—they were making gravity. When Dyson concentrated on creating extraordinary suction while accepting ordinary aesthetics, they weren’t displaying poor judgment—they were creating gravitational pull that would build a billion-pound business.

This excellence physics operates with ruthless precision: the more dimensions you try to excel in simultaneously, the less likely you are to achieve extraordinary performance in any of them. Your resources—time, talent, money, focus—are finite. Spreading them evenly guarantees mediocrity everywhere.

The Danger of Balanced Mediocrity

Most companies operate under a dangerous myth: that balanced development across all business dimensions is the safest approach. This “no obvious weaknesses” strategy feels sensible in board presentations. It looks responsible on strategy documents. And it’s absolutely lethal to your gravitational development.

Here’s why: customers don’t carry balanced scorecards. They don’t meticulously evaluate your business across seventeen dimensions before making decisions. They notice what’s remarkable and filter out what isn’t.

If nothing about your business makes customers say “wow,” nothing about your business will make them say anything at all.

Nokia’s collapse provides the perfect cautionary tale. Once dominant through excellence in two dimensions—physical durability and battery life—they gradually diluted their focus across countless phone categories and features. In their quest to have no weaknesses, they sacrificed their distinctive strengths. By the time smartphones emerged, Nokia had become uniformly good at everything and extraordinary at nothing. Their gravitational field collapsed, and customers drifted to companies offering genuine excellence in specific dimensions—Apple in user experience, BlackBerry in business messaging.

The problem with being good enough at everything is that it’s never enough to be good.

Average companies focus on eliminating weaknesses. Magnetic companies focus on creating extraordinary strengths.

Finding Your Excellence Dimension

By now you’re probably thinking: “Fine, but which dimension should I focus on?”

The answer lies at the intersection of three questions:

1. What dimension naturally aligns with your essence (the core purpose we explored in Section I)?
2. What dimension could you realistically make extraordinary given your resources?
3. What dimension would create meaningful differentiation in your market?

Consider JustGiving, the online fundraising platform. Rather than trying to compete on every feature, they made one dimension extraordinary: donation transparency. They became exceptional at showing donors exactly where their money went, including Gift Aid reclamation for UK taxpayers. This single excellence dimension created enough gravity to fend off much larger competitors.

Headspace took a similar approach to meditation. They didn’t offer the most content or the most advanced techniques. Instead, they made one dimension exceptional: accessibility for beginners. By investing disproportionate resources in Andy Puddicombe’s distinctive guidance and high-quality animations, they made meditation approachable for millions who found traditional instruction intimidating.

Your excellence dimension isn’t necessarily what you’re already best at. It’s where extraordinary performance would create the most gravitational pull. Sometimes this means leveraging existing strengths. Sometimes it means developing entirely new capabilities.

Here’s the framework for finding your excellence dimension:

Product/Service Components: Which elements could achieve extraordinary quality? Customer Experience Touchpoints: Which interactions could become remarkable? Operational Capabilities: Which processes could reach exceptional efficiency? Brand Expressions: Which communication elements could achieve unusual impact? Team Capabilities: Where do you have potential for unusual talent concentration?

Rate each potential dimension on both current performance and excellence potential. Then evaluate the gravitational impact: How visible would excellence be? How memorable? How differentiated from competitors? How aligned with your essence? How achievable with available resources?

The dimension with the highest combined score becomes your focus for extraordinary development.

The Single Dimension Advantage

Once you’ve identified your excellence dimension, the next step is ruthless resource concentration. This requires courage—the willingness to accept being merely good enough in some areas so you can be truly extraordinary in one.

Rapha, the cycling apparel company, demonstrates this principle perfectly. They deliberately chose to excel in product quality and community experience while accepting that their prices would be less accessible than competitors. Every resource decision reinforced this focus: exceptional fabrics, manufacturing partnerships with specialist facilities, distinctive photography, and the signature pink stripe that signalled extraordinary attention to detail.

The result? A gravitational pull strong enough to command premium prices and create passionate advocates despite limited marketing budgets.

ARM Holdings took a similar approach in the highly competitive semiconductor design market. Rather than trying to match Intel’s performance benchmarks, they concentrated on being extraordinary in one dimension: power efficiency. This single-minded focus created a gravitational field that attracted the entire mobile device industry, from smartphones to tablets to smart watches.

The beauty of the single dimension approach is that excellence compounds over time. Each improvement in your chosen dimension doesn’t just add to your advantage—it multiplies it. When you’re already exceptional, even small enhancements further distance you from competitors who are spreading resources across multiple dimensions.

This doesn’t mean neglecting other aspects of your business. It means defining “good enough” thresholds for non-excellence dimensions while pushing for extraordinary performance in your chosen focus.

The gravitational returns on this approach are overwhelming: resources are used more efficiently, teams develop deeper expertise, and customers have a clear, compelling reason to choose you over alternatives.

From Extraordinary to Legendary

When you maintain singular focus on an excellence dimension long enough, something magical happens: you begin to “own” that dimension in customer perception. Your company becomes synonymous with extraordinary performance in that specific area.

Monzo, the digital bank, demonstrates this evolution perfectly. They initially focused on making transaction clarity and categorisation extraordinarily better than traditional banks. This singular excellence created early gravitational pull despite limited features in other areas. As they grew, this dimensional ownership expanded into broader perceptions of transparency and customer-centricity.

Oatly provides another brilliant example. By focusing extraordinary attention on packaging copy and brand voice—while maintaining merely competent product quality—they created a gravitational field that expanded from early adopters to mainstream consumers. Their excellence in one specific dimension became the cornerstone of a multi-billion-pound business.

This progression from extraordinary to legendary doesn’t happen by accident. It requires:

1. Consistent investment in your excellence dimension
2. Clear language that highlights your extraordinary performance
3. Evidence that demonstrates your exceptional quality
4. Stories that feature your excellence dimension
5. Teams trained to consistently articulate your singular focus

The halo effect that results is perhaps the most powerful aspect of dimensional excellence. When customers perceive you as extraordinary in one dimension, they tend to rate you more favourably across all dimensions—even those where you’re merely competitive.

This isn’t deception—it’s perception magnification. By creating genuine excellence somewhere, you reshape how customers experience everything.

The Excellence Audit

To help identify and evaluate potential excellence dimensions in your business, I’ve developed a simple framework called The Excellence Audit. Here’s the condensed version:

1. Dimensional Assessment

   • List potential excellence areas across product/service components, customer experience touchpoints, operational capabilities, brand expressions, and team capabilities
   • Rate each for current performance (1-5) and excellence potential (1-5)

2. Gravitational Impact Evaluation

   • Assess each dimension for visibility, memorability, differentiation, essence alignment, and resource requirements
   • Score each from 1 (Low Impact) to 5 (High Impact)

3. Excellence Strategy Development

   • Determine how to concentrate resources on your chosen dimension
   • Define measurement systems to track progress toward extraordinary performance
   • Plan how to organise teams around your excellence dimension
   • Establish “good enough” thresholds for other areas
   • Develop approaches to make your excellence visible and memorable

This audit works equally well for established companies refocusing their gravitational strategy and startups determining where to concentrate limited resources for maximum impact.

The Ban Average Implementation Plan

Once you’ve identified your excellence dimension, implementation follows four key steps:

1. Excellence Dimension Selection

   • Document your choice and rationale
   • Communicate clearly to the entire organisation
   • Create alignment around the chosen focus

2. Resource Reallocation

   • Identify resources currently spread across multiple dimensions
   • Determine minimum acceptable performance for non-excellence areas
   • Create specific plans to concentrate resources on your chosen dimension
   • Establish governance to protect excellence resources from dilution

3. Excellence Progression

   • Set clear stages of evolution from good to extraordinary
   • Develop detailed quality standards for your chosen dimension
   • Create measurement systems to track excellence progress
   • Build feedback loops to continuously refine performance
   • Establish recognition systems that celebrate dimensional achievements

4. Excellence Communication

   • Make dimensional excellence visible to customers
   • Create language that highlights extraordinary performance
   • Develop evidence that demonstrates exceptional quality
   • Build storytelling approaches that feature your excellence dimension
   • Train teams to consistently articulate your excellence focus

This isn’t a one-time exercise. It’s an ongoing commitment to developing extraordinary performance in your chosen dimension while maintaining acceptable quality elsewhere.

The Excellence Imperative

Let me leave you with this thought: in a world drowning in adequacy, excellence is not optional—it’s the only way to create gravitational pull.

The companies that become obvious choices in their markets aren’t trying to be good at everything. They’re being extraordinary in something.

Look honestly at your business. Where have you settled for balanced mediocrity? What dimension could you make truly exceptional? What would happen if you concentrated your resources on creating one undeniable point of excellence?

The path to becoming the obvious choice isn’t paved with the comforting blandness of balanced development. It’s built on the courage to be calculatedly imbalanced—extraordinary in dimensions that matter, good enough in areas that don’t.

Ban average. Create gravity. Become obvious.

In the next chapter, we’ll explore how to amplify your dimensional excellence through targeted marketing—not creating the illusion of gravity, but broadcasting the pull you’ve genuinely created through extraordinary performance.