Lately, I’m blogging a lot about coping with the challenges and stress of living through turbulent times. On top of everything else, as I write this on October 1st, the US government is officially shut down. What a huge disruption! People who want to be at work are told to stay home and thus feel under-valued; some live paycheck-to-paycheck and don’t know how they’ll pay the bills; and even if an agency has funding, “new starts,” or new programs/acquisitions are not authorized.
The Price of Perfection
Now is not the time to seek perfection. It’s time to go for good enough to complete most daily tasks. I like the proverb, “Perfection is the enemy of good enough.” I learned how true that is when I was enrolled in the Master of Business Administration program at the Kellogg Business School from 1992-94. One business tool I adopted and applied throughout my career is the marginal cost curve. It’s a graph that shows the cost of producing one additional unit of output. At the beginning of a production run, or any kind of task, there’s a lot of productivity. But then comes that dreaded point of diminishing returns. You and your team can put in a ton of money or effort without advancing the product, program, or task one iota.
I’m reminded of the bosses I worked for who prided themselves on being perfectionists, but at what cost to their staff! Those are the bosses whose inboxes never go down because every submission is sent back for yet another revision. The result is often a stressful workplace and suboptimal output.
A Tool for the Times
Although designed for production decisions, I found the marginal cost curve tool useful in day-to-day decision making. Upon graduating from Kellogg business school, I reported to US Coast Guard Headquarters where I was assigned to the office of program review. My role was to review the Service’s major systems acquisitions. In the first few weeks on the job, I felt overwhelmed. I walked around the building meeting all the program managers to learn about their programs, which I had to defend to Congressional staff.
One morning I was visiting with Joe Grant, program manager for the new surface search radar system. Joe informed me the radar system would have a 99% reliability rate. I innocently asked him (wanting to be prepared should Congress ask me) why we couldn’t get to 100%. Looking back, I give Joe lots of credit for patiently explaining what I soon recognized from business school as an analogy to the marginal cost curve. It would cost more than the entire program of record to achieve that remaining 1% of reliability, if it were even possible. Lesson learned!
Perfection v. Good Enough
From thence onward, I lived by the example of the marginal cost curve. Sure, for the radar that mariners rely upon to keep their ships and crews safe, getting as close to perfection as possible is the right thing to do. But I found that for most day-to-day decisions, going for perfection is a waste—an 80-85% solution is satisfactory. A leader needs to be able to discern the level of resources needed to meet the task at hand.
My findings were reinforced when, in preparing for the next budget cycle, our boss wrote on the white board, “A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” Those are the wise words of General George Patton, and they’re just as applicable today as when he uttered them during World War II.
Decision-making is a virtue. Leaders of character must have the courage to accept the risk and make the best decisions they can, within reason, given the information they have.
Look in the mirror: How can you lead the way to help your team embrace the concept of going with what’s “good enough” for the task at hand?
Please join me again next time for more on Leading with Character.
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