Tom Peters had it right, excellence isn’t an accident. It’s a decision.

I revisited In Search of Excellence recently. Written in 1982, but the core message still cuts through: Stop comparing yourself to the average. Look at what the best are doing — and learn from them.

Peters pushed leaders to ask better questions:

Who’s winning? What are they doing differently? What can we apply? That mindset helped move benchmarking from theory into real business practice. It’s the same philosophy behind the TaxFitness Top 20% Benchmarking System.

Traditional benchmarking compares clients to the industry average, which includes a lot of businesses making no profit or paying the owner below market wages.
Averages don’t inspire action.

Benchmarking to the top 20% does. It shows clients what the best operators achieve in wages, margins, overheads, and net profit — and the moment they see the gap, the conversation changes. They lean in. They see possibility. Peters called it excellence. In accounting, we call it advisory.

Top 20% benchmarking is the quickest way to start those advisory conversations — often in under five minutes during a compliance meeting.

Study the best, not the average. Peters said it first — we’ve built a system around it.