When I was a young professional, I occasionally worked with a guy named Mike.
Mike was about 20 years older than me, with a seasoned, weathered look. He carried himself like someone who had been around, someone who’d experienced things beyond the normal ups and downs of life and work. He had the vibe of someone with a story. At the time, he was a service technician. Good at his job. Quiet. Capable. Unassuming and professionally commanding.
He was also a little hard to read. Mike didn’t do small talk, and he didn’t seem to need anyone’s approval, including mine. He’d answer a question and then go quiet again, like the conversation had used its allotted words. I used to wonder if he liked people or was one who only needed a small circle of people. It took me a while to realize it wasn’t distance. It was economy. Mike didn’t waste motion, and he didn’t waste words either. Mike was an efficient machine.
One day I asked another guy we worked with, “What’s Mike’s background?”
He looked at me like I’d asked something ridiculous.
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“Mike was a Green Beret and, like, a good one.”
Wow. Suddenly, some things made sense.
As I got to know him, Mike occasionally shared pieces of his experience. He never needed to tell you how tough he was. He didn’t have to. You could just sense it. Life had tested him, and he’d passed.
One day he asked me a question I’ve never forgotten.
“Do you know what the difference is between a Green Beret and a regular guy?”
“No.”
“Twenty percent,” he said. “And it’s all mental.”
Not twice as strong. Not ten times smarter. Not some superhuman ability the rest of us could never touch—twenty percent more.
More resolve when you want to quit. More discipline when nobody’s watching. More commitment when things get hard. More willingness to keep moving when the outcome isn’t certain.
Mike later gave me one of the best compliments I’ve ever received: “You have that 20% drive. You would have done well.” I was taken aback then, and I am still taken aback.
I was never a Green Beret, and I’d never pretend to understand what earning that title actually requires. But that comment has stayed with me and, at times, has powered me ever since.
The older I get, though, the more I think Mike was onto something bigger than the military.
I think there’s a 20% in business, too.
We look at successful companies and assume there must be some enormous gap between them and everyone else. A brilliant idea. A perfect strategy. Better people. More money. Better timing.
Sometimes that’s true.
But often, the difference isn’t 200%.
It’s 20%.
Most companies aren’t missing a brilliant idea. They’re missing a written vision, one page, said the same way by everyone in the building, instead of living only in the founder’s head. Most companies aren’t missing smart people. They’re missing a written process, the boring, specific documentation of how things actually get done here, so quality doesn’t depend on who happens to be working that day. And most companies aren’t missing ambition. They’re missing the daily, unglamorous habit of actually running the process and reviewing the numbers, whether anyone feels like it or not.
None of that is a strategy breakthrough. It’s a stack of small habits, repeated on purpose.
Write the vision down instead of carrying it around in your head. Document the process rather than relying on tribal memory. Hold the same weekly meeting, review the same scorecard, follow the same rhythm, long after it no longer feels new or exciting.
None of it looks extraordinary in the moment.
But compounded over years, 20% becomes enormous.
Companies rarely collapse because everyone forgot how to do their jobs. They erode, a little at a time. The vision stays in someone’s head instead of on a page everyone can see. The process stays “the way we’ve always done it” rather than being written down and taught. The meeting gets skipped this week, and skipping it gets a little easier next week too. “Good enough” starts to feel fine.
Enough small surrenders, and you’ve got a large problem.
The best organizations move the other way. They go looking for the extra 20%, not 20% more hours, not 20% more stress squeezed out of already-tired people, but 20% more intentionality. A vision that’s actually written down. A process that’s actually documented. And the habit, the unglamorous, repeated habit of executing on both, especially on the days it feels pointless.
Mike probably has no idea how far that one conversation traveled.
Decades later, I still hear it:
“Twenty percent. And it’s all mental.”
Maybe that’s the real distance between average and exceptional, smaller and closer than we tell ourselves. Not talent. Not luck. Just the habits nobody else was willing to keep.
The question isn’t whether you’ve got it all figured out.
It’s whether you’re willing to write it down, do it the same way tomorrow, and find the extra 20%.
