The Dangers of ‘Good Enough’
I was talking to a co-worker yesterday about several things that are scheduled for the coming year, and we got around to a very significant re-write that I've advocated for about as long as I've been at the Shop. It's something that's needed very badly, but the problem is that it would take several months to get a re-write to the point of the existing application (which I support). This delay of months for "nothing" new, while it's still possible to add things to the old application, makes it a very hard sell. So hard, in fact, that I've become convinced that it'll never happen.
Really? You ask.
Really.
Why? You ask, and I'll be glad to tell you.
'Good enough' is the Enemy of Great. - Anonymous
Doesn't sound right, and in fact, the original saying is French:
'Better' is the Enemy of 'Good Enough'
and that is true, but anything - taken to an extreme, is bad. And this motto is no exception. Imagine this: a company starts off small, hungry, willing to take risks to get things done. They succeed, they grow, and life is good. Now the company is doing "good enough". It could certainly be worse - many people are still there that remember the lean days. So the willingness to risk like they did in the past is lost. They don't want to risk the "good enough" for the possibility that things get worse.
There's nothing wrong with this... it's up to the people involved. If you have achieved something, and wish to protect it, there's nothing wrong with that. But don't fool yourself. Someone out there is going to be in the same place you once were, and they will be ready, and willing, to risk a little in order to gain a little more. If you can protect your gains, that's great. But if you're still in a competitive environment, you've just become the target, and you're standing still.
Dead meat.
So rather than grow, you stagnate. Maybe that's OK, and you get out of the business altogether. Lots do. Nothing wrong with it. But if you expect to stay a leader, then you need to act like a leader, and that means you need to continue to improve and take the same kind of (appropriate) risks that you did to get to this point.
Our conversation got to this point on many fronts of the Shop. It seemed very puzzling to me why this would be the case with the original founders still with the company. Why would they stop? And as I was thinking about it, it might be because they (and others) are still with the Shop.
They all remember the "bad days", and so are fearful of returning to them. They aren't thinking that today is a new baseline for the future. They're probably thinking that today is 'good enough' - compared to not too long ago. And that's not a good philosophy to run a business by. Pretty soon, your competitors are going to make your 'good enough' a lot more like the 'bad old days' because you're too fearful of the kind of risk that got you to this place in the beginning.
As a university professor, I didn't understand why a university would not hire someone that got all their degrees from that school. I mean, who better to lead the school than someone that's been through it? But that's exactly the person you don't want. Get some new blood in there... see the world from a different perspective... refine the vision. If you're managing people in an international business and the only place you've ever worked is the one employer, then you're doing everyone a grave disservice. You need to move on.
Of course, this isn't welcome opinion, but it's good advice. You are a product of the environment, and as it has grown, you have grown, but you have no basis of comparison for your actions. When people come in to a business, and you only know how this one place functions, you have no idea what they are expecting. Even if you ask them, the myopic views you'll have will end up causing the 'good enough' to slip in and degrade the business.
There was a question I didn't understand when taking all those entrepreneur tests - What's your exit strategy?. Mine was always: Retire, but that's a bad plan, and it misses the reason for the strategy: an exit. If it gets really successful, you are most likely going to have to take yourself out of the day-to-day operation as it's going to outgrow you. I see it now, and I'll be sure not to make that mistake, but it's a lesson I think several people here should take to heart.