"In you own business, be decisive and never look back..."
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The Enemy of Good is Perfect

I was sitting at lunch today with an old friend whom I first met when both of our daughters attended the same school a few years ago.  Subsequently the school closed and what was once a sort of tight family of parents and students scattered to the wind but our friendship has endured.  Anyway, we were talking about our kids and he shared that he had grounded his daughter as her grades were slipping.  He attributed this to among other things her obsession with My Space and text messaging.

Anyway, this could indeed be the case but I did ask how far her grades had fallen and he shared that she had dropped from her customary A+ to a B+.  Now, I am not here to judge and he may have it exactly right, but the whole thing brings to mind something that has always amazed me; otherwise sane people go a little crazy trying to make good enough perfect.  When it comes to business this tendency has been the downfall of many a good thing.  Taking the analogy a little further, is it really that bad that the daughter traded a perfect grade for a good one if the trade off resulted in new friends? 

Let me give you an example in a current business context.  I knew a developer who never got his project off the ground because he was so obsessed with getting everything perfect.  When he needed to install the sewer system, as an example, he got three bids all from excellent firms, had them give presentations, and then spent weeks agonizing on which one would be best.  And all the while he obsessed on that one thing, other equally important decisions all had to wait as they needed to be perfect too.  In the end, he perfected himself into the poor house. 

What should he have done?  Make a damn decision.  Sometimes a B or even a C is as good as an A in the big picture.  When time is money, and in business it ALWAYS is, you need to move the ball ahead.  The worse thing that you can do is to not make a decision unless it is perfect.  Besides in most cases you cannot really tell the difference between perfect and good enough.  I mean, was anyone really going to dig up and inspect the sewer system in the aforementioned development to appreciate how much better the poop was disposed of in one system over another?

In you own business, be decisive and never look back.  Good enough is, well, good enough!

Posted by Herb Kay on Thursday, April 24, 2008

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