A few years ago, I heard a politician say that we must be careful not to allow "the perfect to be the enemy of the good." He was explaining why a little progress on an important issue was better than political gridlock, and how compromise is often more productive than intransigent idealism. Eventually, I discovered that this political figure was paraphrasing Voltaire, the eighteenth-century French author and philosopher.*
I suppose that the reason that this quote so captured my attention is that, at an earlier time in my life, I considered myself a perfectionist -- and not necessarily in a good sense of the word. Taken to extreme, perfectionism can inhibit progress. Sometimes progress is inhibited when a good plan that is only 90 or 95% perfect never leaves the drawing board. Even when a plan is 100% "perfect," the value added by the last 5% of the plan is often not worth the cost in time or money. As the years passed, I learned those important lessons. Today, I euphemistically consider myself to be a "recovering perfectionist," and (with a grin) I sometimes introduce myself that way.
As it turns out, Voltaire was not the last person to write with great insight about this idea. In 1956, Herbert Simon wrote about what he called "bounded rationality."** His essay has since become a sort of classic for those studying organizational theory. Basically, Simon pointed out that we human beings are incapable of making 100% rational decisions, especially when it comes to complicated matters. There are a number of reasons for this. First, none of us has the gift of omniscience; we don't known everything there is to know about any topic. Second, even if we could know everything about a topic, it would take an inordinate amount of time and lead to a sort of "analysis paralysis." Finally, our cognitive ability is limited; none of of is perfect in our thinking and reasoning. So, as a practical matter, we often settle on the first solution that meets our needs, even if it is imperfect -- that is, we "satisfice" (a term coined later by Simon).
The degree to which we satisfice is often dictated by the importance of our decisions. If we were performing brain surgery, the decisions that we make would need to be more perfect. Fortunately, most of us make hundreds of decisions in the course of our work week that are less critical. Therefore, we can feel much better about satisficing as a strategy for making as much progress as we can. Nonetheless, we should never mistake slipshod work for satisficing. Satisficing meets our needs. Slipshod work does not.
There are plenty of recent examples here at Clinton Community College. We've made great progress on a number of fronts, including the construction of our new Student Services Support Center, our efforts to recruit students from China, and our first-in-the-state Wind Energy and Turbine Technology programs. To be sure, none of them has been 100% flawless, but we are making excellent progress on all fronts. As I often say at our staff meetings, "We don't have to be perfect; we just have to be better today than we were yesterday." If we do that day after day, we will have accomplished much in the course of a year.
That's what I think. I am interested to know what you think. Please e-mail me at presidentsblog@clinton.edu to let me know.
___________________________________* "Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien." - Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique (1764)
** "Rational Choice and the Structure of the Environment" - Herbert Simon (1956)
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