If you’ve been skiing, you know how important the ski lift is. It’s how we get to the top of the mountain to have all our fun.

But not everyone can just get on the ski lift. You have to have a lift ticket. (It’s a little card with an RFID that they scan when you reach the front of the line.)

However, you actually don’t have to use the lifts to come to the resort. You could just hike to the top of the mountain and ski down. I have a friend who has done just this as a workout in the winter. Now, I love skiing, but not that much! That would be way too much work.

A lot of great organizations look like this from the outside. We see a big, tall mountain of success with a daunting hike to reach the top. I’d love to be a legend in my category, but I don’t know that I want it enough to march all the way to the top of the mountain every time I want to become great. 

But it doesn’t have to be that hard. There are engines, like a ski lift, that get you to the top much faster and easier than you might think. You don’t have to work yourself to the bone to be great. You just have to build an engine that will get you there. 

So, when studying greatness, don’t just look at the customer experience they deliver; look at the engines behind the experience. What did they do to get in a position to be great in the first place?

For example, I have found that one of the engines behind excellence is getting really good at hiring. It’s much easier to build a great company if you only hire great people. Another is to measure performance and share the score with your team. People intrinsically want to win and will push themselves to improve their scores without any new tools or training.

What are the engines that are driving your experiences? What could make all the other stuff you do easier?