Big Potential: How Lifting Others Creates Exponential Results in Your Mental Operating System
Written by Eric Deniger — multiple-time Inc. 500 CEO, U.S. Army veteran (Operation Desert Storm), and founder of Focused Systems. Eric spent 25 years building and scaling companies before turning those systems into the frameworks used in this article. Read Eric's full story and credentials →
How we use this: Every framework in this article is drawn from the same Neuro-Logical Levels and systems-based coaching methodology Eric uses with real clients. See what professionals are saying →
Big Potential: How Lifting Others Creates Exponential Results in Your Mental Operating System
Shawn Achor’s Big Potential builds on his earlier work in The Happiness Advantage and makes a compelling case that individual success has limits. True, sustainable, and exponential success comes from what he calls Big Potential — the ability not only to reach your own highest level of performance, but also to lift the people around you higher.
Achor argues that in today’s interconnected world, your potential is no longer determined solely by your own talent, effort, or intelligence. It is multiplied (or limited) by the success of those around you. When you help others succeed, you create a virtuous cycle that dramatically increases your own results, influence, and opportunities.
The book breaks down practical strategies for leaders to create environments where everyone can perform at their best — including the power of positive leadership, recognition, social support, and removing the barriers that keep people from reaching their potential.
How Big Potential Strengthens the Focused Systems Mental Operating System
In Focused Systems, we teach that your results are a product of your systems, not just your effort. Big Potential adds a critical layer: your systems are most powerful when they are designed to elevate the people around you.
This aligns directly with several core Focused Systems principles:
The WE Factor and Family/Team Systems — Your success is deeply connected to the success of your family, team, and community. When you install systems that help others thrive, you create compounding returns for everyone involved.
Above-the-Line Leadership — Big Potential leaders take ownership not just for their own performance, but for the environment and culture they create. They focus on lifting others rather than competing against them.
Positive Expectancy and Recognition — Achor’s research shows that recognition and positive leadership dramatically increase performance. This mirrors the power of the Evidence Log, public wins in Weekly Huddles, and the 6 Rs of Leadership we use in Focused Systems.
Systems Over Willpower — Trying to succeed alone is exhausting and limited. Building systems that make it easier for others to succeed (and for you to support them) creates sustainable, scalable results.
When you combine Achor’s ideas with the Focused Systems 3-Step Framework, individual achievement evolves into something much more powerful: the ability to create ripple effects of success through your family, team, and organization.
How to Install Big Potential Ideas Into Your Focused Systems System
Here are the most practical ways to turn the book’s concepts into daily habits:
Make Recognition a System, Not a Feeling — Use your Weekly Huddles and Evidence Log to deliberately recognize others’ wins. Don’t wait until you “feel like it.” Make lifting others a recurring item in your Personal PAL (S³).
Design Your Environment to Elevate Others — Just as we design our physical space for focus, we can design our leadership and communication for Big Potential. In meetings and conversations, ask: “How can I help this person succeed right now?” This simple shift changes the dynamic from competition to collaboration.
Use the Planner to Track Ripple Effects — In your Quarterly Reviews or Weekly Planning, ask yourself: “Who did I help succeed this week, and what was the impact?” Track not just your own Rocks, but the ways you enabled others. This builds the identity of a Big Potential leader.
Build Masterminds and Support Structures — Big Potential strongly supports the power of peer groups and accountability. Your Focused Systems Mastermind or family meetings become engines for collective success when everyone is committed to lifting each other higher.
Protect Your Own Energy So You Can Give More — You cannot pour from an empty cup. Use your Golden Hours, time-blocking, and daily systems to stay at high performance so you have the capacity to support others without burning out.
The Focused Systems Difference
Many people read Big Potential and feel inspired to be more helpful. In Focused Systems, we turn that inspiration into installation.
When you combine Shawn Achor’s research with the Focused Systems Planner, Personal PAL, and Weekly Huddles, helping others succeed stops being something you try to do and becomes something your operating system produces automatically.
Your success is no longer limited to what you can achieve alone.
It becomes limited only by how effectively you can lift the people around you.
Ready to build systems that create Big Potential for yourself and everyone around you?
Get the Focused Systems Planner here.
Unbreakable Focus. Predictable Results. Master Your Mind. Master Your Market.