This is the final part of a four-part blog series. I will be publishing a new post every Wednesday. To see the entire series, please check here.

At Google, I was fortunate enough to work for many years under Lorraine Twohill, now Google’s CMO. She is an amazing manager and mentor, a fantastic marketer, and more generally a brilliant business brain.

In Google early days, Lorraine encouraged us to aim at an ROI of 7 or above. In her eyes, any ROI lower than 7 would be considered as something quite average that should park for good, or seriously improve before doing it again.

It’s been years since I have worked with Lorraine, but keeping an ROI of 7 has always stayed in my mind. The reality is, an ROI of 7 is actually excellent and if this is your benchmark you’ll be over-performing anywhere in business, starting with technology companies where ROI is often the highest.

And that’s the point, setting goals above average. When you are setting goals, don’t look at your neighbor or competitors in the industry, look at the absolute best!

There is so much today’s businesses are up against, especially in the digital age. We are fighting for attention from Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc. There are incredible digital offerings around every corner. To have a shot at really winning this attention we can’t simply aim for our competitor’s benchmark. We can’t aim for average. We must aim for the absolute best.

Do you have a special formula or ratio that inspires you in your career? Share it!

Article may also be found on LinkedIn