We seem to be in the throes of a culture that demands perfection within a corporate culture. Ain't gonna' happen. We're human; we'll never be perfect. That inescapable fact leaves us with two alternatives if we continue to embrace the current corporate paradigm:
- All those who fall short of perfection are run out of the workplace on a rail (raise your hand if you are not perfect and more than likely to screw up very soon), or
- We bend the workplace culture to tacitly support the myth of perfection while we apply the expectations unevenly across the workers
If the first option is adopted, we run through people in a never-ending blur of hiring and firing and destroying people's lives. In addition, those managers involved in this kind of regime slowly lose their souls. Ultimately, the option of embracing "Perfection Only" drives the very best employees away along with the initial batch of screwups. The scales of perfection weigh in finer and finer measures until all are found wanting.
The second option creates a hypocritical work environment where administrators can do no wrong and are protected from their mistakes while the workers and staff are devalued and mistreated. Again, the best will leave.
Of course, the third option is to do the difficult–to seek a balance between workplace harmony and workplace perfection. This option requires thoughtfulness, creativity, and a certain kind of leadership courage. This is the difficult option.
I found a good way to think about the third option in Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers. In it, he writes about a way of approaching productivity that is a counter to an expectation of perfection. He writes about, "Good enough!" His research indicates that "good enough" usually produces results that are, well, good enough. The grind toward perfection may be instead an unthinking rush toward diminishing returns.
So . . . the following formula may produce superior results to the current quest for perfection:
HARMONY + GOOD ENOUGH = OPTIMUM PERFORMANCE AND PRODUCTIVITY
Just a thought!
You might want to check out a companion article: "The Chains of Continuous Improvement."
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