Aspirational people are always aiming high.

Modelling is a great way to learn from others. The idea is if you do what they did you’ll get similar results.

Aspirational people therefore look at people who they perceive as more successful than them, and they model what they are doing.

And herein lies the mistake…

They model what the other person is doing rather than what the other person did to get where they are now.

As a result, I see aspirational people with early-stage businesses focussing on the Corporate Social Responsibility program but neglecting their internal communications, I see aspirational people doing employee engagement testing but neglecting their recruitment and selection process, I see aspirational people focussing on Six Sigma but neglecting simple process mapping…

To get to the top, whatever that means to you, doesn’t mean jumping straight to what the people at the top are doing. By taking that approach you neglect the years, and sometimes decades, that person invested to earn the privilege to focus on what they currently get to focus on.

Getting to the top starts at the bottom.