Perfection is the enemy of good. Have you heard that one? It’s a well-known quote by French author, Volaire who lived during the early 1700’s. This quote was the topic of a discussion during the recent PCMA Education Conference in Montreal. This conversation wasn’t during a keynote, or a breakout session, but instead over dinner with my business partner. We got talking about out clients, and when we should send them a product to review—should it be “perfect” in our eyes, or just “good enough” to see if they like it. The client is always right, right??Well, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this. Is Perfection really the enemy of Good? As we relayed our discussion to one of the leaders of PCMA, he added another thought. Perhaps we should strive for “Optimum”, instead of settling for good, or striving for perfection. AH HA! Brilliant. I like it, and I agree.
As I did a little research about Volaire’s quote. Here’s what I found on www.famous-quotes.net:
The point is more to know when to realize that any additional effort toward improvement would result in a negligible improvement, especially in comparison to the effort required.
When you reach that point… the product is optimum. Perhaps not perfect, but as good as it can be without negligible improvement in comparison to the effort required. For me, that means knowing I have done my best, I have given it my all, and I have maintained the client’s best interests at heart. If we have done that, whether the client likes the product or not, I feel like we have done our job…. We have reached “optimum”.
When is your product optimum? Do you find yourself settling for “good enough”, or striving for perfection?
That's a more eloquent version of my quote, which has been: "will it improve 1%, or 100%?"
ReplyDeleteWe always strive for the best, but at some point we have to accept what we have and realize that the time spent could be better utilized on another project.
When interviewing, I often use "striving for perfection" as one of my negative attributes that need work. It's an easy talking point and has seemed to help me out so far!
Great blog entry!