Mark: Alright Michelle, I'm going to say a book title, and you give me your gut reaction. Friday Forward: Inspiration & Motivation to End Your Week Even Stronger Than You Started It. Michelle: Sounds like something my alarm clock would say to me if it were trying to sell me a protein shake. A little too cheerful for a Friday morning, maybe? Mark: I get that, but the story behind it is actually fascinating. The author, Robert Glazer, is the founder and CEO of a global company, Acceleration Partners. He started this not as a book, but as a simple weekly email to his 40 employees to share some inspiration. Michelle: Oh, okay. Mark: It just exploded organically. Employees started forwarding it to friends and family, and now this newsletter reaches over 200,000 people in more than 60 countries. It became this global movement completely by accident. Michelle: Wow, that's a much more interesting backstory than a protein shake ad. So it's not just generic 'you can do it' fluff? Because the title feels very… aspirational. Mark: Exactly. It’s grounded in real leadership and personal growth principles. In fact, one of the most powerful ideas in the book is something that sounds completely counter-intuitive: the idea that to be great, you first have to choose where you're going to be bad. Michelle: Hold on, you're telling me the secret to success is to… suck at things? That sounds like a fantastic excuse for the state of my desk right now. Mark: (Laughs) Well, not exactly. It's about being strategically bad.

Mark: Glazer calls this concept "Breaking Bad," and he uses a perfect example that we all know: IKEA. Think about it. What is IKEA bad at? Michelle: Oh, I can answer this. Assembly. Definitely assembly. And finding a salesperson. And the fact that their stores are always in the middle of nowhere. Mark: Precisely. They are objectively terrible at those things. You have to build your own furniture, there's almost no customer service on the floor, and you have to drive 45 minutes to get there. But what are they world-class at? Michelle: Being cheap. And making stylish furniture that actually fits in a tiny apartment. And those meatballs, of course. Mark: Exactly. IKEA made a conscious, strategic decision to be bad at service, assembly, and convenience so they could pour all their resources into being the absolute best in the world at price, systems, and design for small spaces. They didn't just cut corners; they chose which corners to bulldoze. Michelle: That’s a great way to put it. So it’s not about being lazy, it’s about making a trade-off. You can't be great at everything, so you have to unapologetically decide what you're not going to be great at. Mark: Right. And Glazer argues this applies to our personal lives too. He mentions a study on working parents. The ones who were most stressed and unhappy were the ones trying to be perfect at everything—perfect employee, perfect parent, perfect spouse, perfect home. The happier parents were the ones who had made peace with being 'bad' at certain things, like having a spotless house, so they could be 'great' at their job and being present with their kids. Michelle: That hits home. The guilt of not being good at everything is a huge energy drain. But what happens when the pressure to be perfect comes from the outside, like from a boss? Mark: That's where the idea gets even more critical. Glazer tells another story that shows the dark side of this: what happens when a culture has no freedom to fail, or to be 'bad' at something. He brings up the Volkswagen emissions scandal. Michelle: The 'Dieselgate' thing? Mark: The very same. The CEO at the time, Martin Winterkorn, had an authoritarian style. He hated failure and created a climate of intense fear. The engineers were under immense pressure to create a diesel engine that was both low-emission and high-performance, a goal they just couldn't meet. Michelle: So what did they do? Mark: Instead of admitting they had failed to meet the standard, which would have been career suicide in that environment, they cheated. They designed a 'defeat device'—software that could tell when the car was being tested and would temporarily lower emissions to pass. On the open road, the cars were spewing pollutants up to 40 times the legal limit. Michelle: That's horrifying. And it all came crashing down. Mark: It cost them billions of dollars, destroyed their reputation, and executives faced criminal charges. It’s a chilling example of what happens when you don't allow for failure. A culture of 'perfection at all costs' literally led to one of the biggest corporate failures in modern history. Michelle: Wow. So a culture of 'perfection' actually created the conditions for massive, unethical failure. It seems like the 'how' you pursue a goal is far more important than the goal itself.

Mark: And that brings us to the hidden architecture behind real achievement. Glazer makes this brilliant distinction he learned from a former Marine officer named Eric Kapitulik. It's the difference between goals and standards. Michelle: Okay, but what's the real difference? Isn't 'don't be late' both a goal and a standard? Mark: That's what most of us think, but Kapitulik's definition is razor-sharp. He says goals are things you hope to achieve. You can miss a goal. When you do, you dust yourself off, you learn, you adjust your plan, and you try again. Michelle: Right, like a sales target or a weight loss goal. Mark: Exactly. But a standard is uncompromising. It's a non-negotiable principle. And when you fail to meet a standard, there must be a consequence. If there isn't, the standard is meaningless. It's just a suggestion. Michelle: I see. So for a family, a 'goal' might be to have more family dinners, but a 'standard' is 'we never bring phones to the table.' And if someone breaks that standard, their phone gets put away for the rest ofthe night. Mark: You've got it. The consequence upholds the standard. Glazer gives the example of a child's curfew. If the standard is to be home by 10 PM, and the child comes home at 10:30 with no consequence, then the curfew isn't 10 PM anymore. It's 10:30, or whenever they feel like it. The standard has evaporated. Michelle: This feels so applicable to personal life. We set all these 'goals' for ourselves, like 'I want to exercise more,' but they're flimsy. What if we reframed it as a standard? Mark: That's the core idea. It shifts the entire mindset. This connects directly to what Charles Duhigg calls 'keystone habits.' A keystone habit is a small standard that, once implemented, triggers a cascade of other positive changes. Michelle: Can you give an example? Mark: Glazer mentions a study on weight loss. Researchers found that the single most effective habit for losing weight wasn't a specific diet or exercise plan. It was the simple act of keeping a daily food journal. Michelle: Just writing down what you eat? Mark: Just writing it down. That one small, consistent act—that standard—made people more aware of their choices. It led them to plan their meals better, eat healthier, and exercise more, all without being told to. The standard of journaling created a positive ripple effect across their entire lifestyle. It's about building an architecture for success, not just wishing for an outcome.

Michelle: So what I'm hearing is that we're all obsessed with setting these big, shiny goals, but the real work happens in the shadows. It's in the un-sexy decisions: what you're willing to be bad at, and the small, non-negotiable standards you hold yourself to every single day. Mark: Exactly. Glazer’s point, which is backed by a lot of high-performance psychology, is that capacity isn't built by grand gestures. It's built by designing an environment and a set of personal rules that make excellence almost inevitable. It’s less about relying on heroic willpower and more about creating a smart personal architecture. Michelle: I love that. It feels so much more manageable. You don't have to change everything at once. You just have to pick your battles and define your non-negotiables. Mark: And that leads to a really practical takeaway. The book talks about creating a 'stop-doing' list, which is just as important as a to-do list. So the challenge for our listeners isn't just to add more to their plate. Michelle: It's to take something off. Mark: Right. What's one thing you're currently trying to be good at that you could strategically choose to be 'bad' at, to free up energy for what really matters? Michelle: That's a powerful question. And maybe even simpler: what's one standard, not a goal, you could set for yourself this week? Just one non-negotiable. It could be as small as making your bed every morning or not checking your email for the first hour of the day. Mark: A small standard that can start a positive avalanche. A great thought to end the week on. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.