Here’s a way to visualize why perfection is a fruitless pursuit.
“Good enough is good enough.”
“Success, not perfection”
Alan Weiss
Category: Contemplations
Expertise is developed one step at a time
As I’ve said before experience is not a sign of expertise. The difference between someone with 10 years of experience and someone with expertise is a matter of repetition versus gradual refinement. There’s no secret to expertise. It’s not an innate characteristic. It’s something that is developed. The easiest way to develop expertise is to improve a little bit each…
Paycheck Driven
Do you have a strategy to know when to say no to a potential customer? To know when they walk in the door that although you would like to help them, you just really aren’t capable or you might jeopardize the help you provide to existing customers. It’s hard not to want to help everyone but the reality is you…
Taking on new opportunities can enhance your diagnostic mindset.
The more and more you do the same type of work, or the same type of activities, the harder it is to focus on what’s the right thing to do. The more of an expert you become, the easier it is to jump to conclusions about what you need to do given a particular situation. This is simply how your…
Improvement is not innovation
Innovation is to create something new for tomorrow. Improvement is to refine what we already have today. Innovation requires a vision and then working backward to where you are today, like completing a maze in reverse, to forge a path. Improvement merely requires movement, small steps, from where you are now, regardless of the direction. Improvement is not innovation. But,…
Experience is not expertise
It’s tempting to think that someone who has experience doing something for many years is skilled at what they do. But, repeated exposure to events is not what leads to expertise. Skill does not develop from experience. For example, let’s say you can gauge the success of an auto mechanic by looking at rate of success in repairing cars. If…
Questions to figure out how you can help someone else
I talk a lot about making sure work is worthwhile. And that starts with an understanding of what we would like to accomplish. Then, talking about what value that would provide. And then determining if what it might cost makes it a worthwhile endeavor. I find it easy to talk about this in the context of business but sometimes challenging…
Meaningless words
The tech community is overrun with jargon. And there’s plenty of it that serves a specific purpose. But there’s also a lot of jargon that’s become meaningless: Agile – is used for any new idea anyone has about software development processes, and any rehashed idea from decades ago that someone rediscovers The Cloud – seems to be the new way…
Help customers decide if they should shop elsewhere
It’s simply not possible to serve anyone that walks through the door. If you try, you’ll wind up neglecting those you can serve well and you’ll be providing marginal service at best to everyone else. You should know the type of individuals and organizations can help and you should actively be screening the people that you can’t. It’s the right…