Way to reform. I strive for excellence but leave perfection for people with nothing but time on their hands.

David

Great post. As a reformed perfectionist, I couldn’t agree more.

I think that you need to pick your battles and only strive for perfection in a few key areas.

Craig

I could now say MO instead of GEMO but yes I think the more precise term for me is a number of iterations. Maybe Iwill have to play with that word as I find I can remember snappy terms.

David

good concept, also when preparing for something (avoids Analysis Paralysis). Maybe MO it’s a bit too snappy, sometimes. It rather needs to be an “iterate”, from time to time.

Rolf

I sit drinking my coffee (good quality by the way) and really appreciate the coffee metaphor and the time you took to respond to the post. GEMO can be so helpful yet there is also the performance standard, quite a balancing act.

David

We had a discussion in our office not long ago about our having reached a point in our way of doing things that we stopped at “just good enough.” This was not thought to be a good thing because our standard of excellence had slipped. The underlying thought was that everything required meticulous attention and that we had fallen off our game. The unarticulated, but generally understood principle underlying this whole discussion was this: we must do everything we do exceptionally well, very precisely lest we fall off our game and spiral down into the void. Two things about this unarticulated principle: (1) everyone applies the standard in a different way because it is never really talked about openly and as a result the standard is applied person by person, even by the principle’s most ardent supporters and (2) it is impossible in today’s very fast moving world to achieve this standard even if it were well defined and understood … there is too much to be that precise about.

GEMO is a good principle because it can cut through the futzing around with stuff that is unnecessary but there ought to be some discussion about what the performance standard (or expectations) should be. In a previous life when I was in a professional service firm we used what I will call the coffee standard:

⁃ Do you just want a cup of instant coffee ... a quick and dirty solution?
⁃ Do you want a fresh brewed cup of off the grocery shelf coffee ... nothing fancy but let's get it done well?
⁃ Do you want a gourmet cup of the finest coffee brewed meticulously ... spare no resource, this has to be done to perfection?


This really went a long ways to getting expectations clarified and was easy to understand.

Thanks for the post. Thought provoking and enjoyable as always.