Addressed a couple of thousand KFC franchisees yesterday. I dusted off a couple of quotes from my old friend, former Burger King CEO Barry Gibbons:
“When we did it ‘right’ it was still pretty ordinary.” (Barry Gibbons on his “Nightmare No. 1”)
“I thought, ‘What a dreadful mission I have in life.’ I’d love to get six-thousand restaurants up to spec, but when I do it’s ‘Ho-hum.’ It’s bugged me ever since. It’s one of the great paradoxes of modern business. We all know distinction is key, and yet in the last twenty years we have created a plethora of ho-hum products and services. Just go fly in an airplane. It could be such an enlightening experience. Ho-hum. We swim in an ocean of ho-hum, and I’m going to fight it. I’m going to die fighting it.”—Barry Gibbons
Here are a couple of other pithies on this topic of the limits of normalcy:
“To succeed, we must stop being so goddamn normal. In a winner takes all world, normal = nothing.”—Kjell Nordström & Jonas Ridderstråle, Funky Business
“I don’t think there’s anything worse than being ordinary.”—Mena Suvari/American Beauty