“Optimizing, the art of finding the best choice among all the options, is a luxury we often can’t afford. Instead, we take the first appropriate solution we find, even if it means deciding where to eat lunch, who to hire or what career path to follow,” says Thought Form’s Don Moyer.
In his book From Good to Great, Jim Collins elaborates extensively and profusely on the subject, persuasively pointing out the trap of the good. And I summarize it simply: given that on the road to excellence you go through the good, it is easy to take this first option and be satisfied. However, it is also easy to agree that good is often not enough.
Herbert Simon, a Nobel laureate, defines the term “satisficing” to describe decision making that prefers the shortcut of recognizing a set of aspirations, then accepting some of them, usually the first, and settling for the minimum required. He further points out that this is a pragmatic and often necessary path, since optimization is often a futile and costly pursuit.
The trap of the good, therefore, is one that we must recognize in our quest for the best, the maximum or the excellent. In fact, Moyer recognizes the importance of processes, which he interestingly calls modelers, since it is in the processes themselves that teams model projects, ideas and thoughts.
Adding these concepts together, it makes sense to create systems, sequences or routes that allow processes to model the path to the extraordinary, and thus avoid settling for the good.
Extraordinary products, extraordinary services, extraordinary solutions, extraordinary ideas. All extraordinary, that good, though often practical, is not good enough.
If all this makes sense and we live committed to what we believe in, what are we doing to take a route that doesn’t stop at the good? How are we going to avoid comfortable conformity to the good? What is your or my formula for going for the extraordinary?
The trap of the good is thus publicly denounced. Let us avoid it every day.