Move the bar!  The phrase raising the bar has been a part of our vernacular for so long it's unimportant where it came from. What is important is that the bromide assumes a great deal about achievement, success and accomplishment, as well as attaining, sustaining and surpassing goals. Are those standards that measure success in your particular circle still meaningful to you?

Georgia O'Keeffe, the contemporary American painter, left the Art Institute of Chicago soon after enrolling. Years later, after becoming recognized and revered, she was asked why she left. "They wanted me to paint the way they painted, not the way I painted."

Mary Cassatt, another American painter, was asked about the difficulties of achieving recognition in a field dominated by French men. Cassatt said, "Acceptance on someone else's terms is worse than rejection."

Many businesses and governments were first guided by what their predecessors had established as their measurement of success. Most of the parameters that defined success in the past have changed because they were dramatically and continuously challenged by the forces in the marketplace in which they perform. It is not quite the same thing for institutions and individuals.

At the core of most institutions was an established, even codified, reason for being. However, no matter how benevolent the institution, over time the unspoken agenda becomes survival rather than the purpose that originally formed the group. Because institutions are usually closed systems and are not compelled to respond to external forces, the need to continuously affirm the relevance of its original purpose could be lost or forgotten in an effort to maintain the organization and its managers.

The principle is the same for privately held businesses or individual performers as well as institutions. If you are not continuously either affirming or adjusting your own reason for being there is a natural process that defeats change and inhibits growth. The water in a bath tub will eventually settle as still as a sheet of glass. But, a bath tub on a ship is continuously jostled by the body of water surrounding the vessel.

If the bar is where you want it to be and success is within your grasp, you are in great shape. However, if after careful examination, the bar is not where you thought it was or it was not where you want it to be, change it — now! Don't wait or waste another moment of time, money or, more importantly, effort.

Move the bar to a place that defines your highest form of success. If it's money, fine. If it's recognition, O.K. If it's satisfaction, great. Each goal, once identified, automatically positions the bar and implies a course of action.

Our success has been to help our clients identify and affirm what it is they do and what their customers will appreciate. Values don’t have to change. What is valued by one generation can still be meaningful to the next if we help them to see the importance and understand its relevance to them.

Our website has case studies that demonstrate our ability to help identify and affirm the value and values of our clients to their customers.

Worth your time: Zen in the Martial Arts by Joe Hyams. The author of this collection of short essays, a longtime student of Bruce Lee, among others, writes about life lessons learned over decades of martial arts study. Stories of patience, diligence, kindness, confidence, fear, expectations and limitations are told in a clear, engaging style that helps us connect age-old Eastern philosophy to how we interact in business and in life.