The third-best is the way

After spending the past 14 months, give or take a few weeks, dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, I think it is fairly safe to say that we are living in a world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.  The U.S. Army War College is believed to have been the first to use to use the acronym VUCA to describe the state of the world that existed shortly after the end of the Cold War.  The acronym has since been broadly used in a variety of settings outside of the military to describe what organizations from hospitals to Fortune 500 companies deal with on a daily basis.  

Who would have predicted that a terrorist organization would weaponize four commercial airplanes to bring down the World Trade Center and cause significant damage to the U.S. Pentagon on September 11, 2001?  Who would have predicted that the hopelessness and despair of a Tunisian fruit vendor would lead to the so-called Arab Spring, which itself led through a chain of events to Brexit?  While a number of experts, including billionaire Bill Gates predicted that we were due for another worldwide pandemic similar to the 1918 Influenza Pandemic, very few government officials and almost no one in the public at large believed that it would occur this soon.  And finally, who could have anticipated that a container ship getting stuck in the middle of the Suez Canal would have such far-reaching effects on the global economy?  If you have been reading my last few posts (see, for example, "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature!", "For want of a nail...", or "The razor's edge"), or if you subscribe to the belief that we live in a VUCA world, none of these events should come as a surprise.

Rebecca Zucker and Darin Rowell recently wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review entitled, "6 Strategies for leading through uncertainty".  While these leadership experts made several great points, one of the ones that stuck out, at least for me, was the recommendation to "Let go of perfectionism"  They suggested, "In a complex environment [see VUCA world above], the context is continually shifting; thus, aiming for perfection is futile.  Instead, aim for progress, expect mistakes, and recognize that you have the ability to continually course correct as needed."  

Sir Robert Alexander Watson-Watt was a British physicist who was instrumental in developing and using radar (note that RADAR is also an acronym that stands for "RAdio Detection And Ranging") to help the Royal Air Force win the Battle of Britain in World War II.  Watson-Watt once said, "Always strive to give the military the third best because the best is impossible and second best is always too late."  Britain did not have the luxury of time during the summer of 1940 - waiting for the best (perfect) radar system would have delayed its employment, perhaps resulting in a history-changing German victory in the Battle of Britain.  This philosophy has come to be known as the "cult of the imperfect" which is perhaps best summarized by the French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire when he said, "The best is the enemy of the good."  

By focusing on the perfect solution, we may inadvertently try to tackle bigger problems, some of which may not be solvable.  As a result, we can start to feel overwhelmed - then we may not finish other projects or tasks.  As things begin to pile up, that feeling of being "stretched too thin" only gets worse.  A vicious cycle leads to psychological distress and burn-out.  Sheryl Sandberg, the Chief Operating Officer at Facebook once said, "Done is better than perfect."  More often than not, "good enough" is better than perfect.  

Perfectionism is not only undesirable in a VUCA world, it is dangerous!  The pursuit of a perfect solution to a problem will waste valuable (and often limited) time and resources.  We should not try to "gild the lily".  Instead, we should strive for "good enough" or "third best."  Herbert Simon, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1978 and the Turing Award in 1975 introduced the term,  "satisficing", a portmanteau of the two words satisfy and suffice.  In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, he said, "Decision makers can satisfice either by finding optimum solutions for a simplified world, or by finding satisfactory solutions for a more realistic world.  Neither approach, in general, dominates the other, and both have continued to co-exist in the world of management science."

The world is too complex to aim for perfection.  It's been shown throughout history that in many cases, "third best" is not only "good enough", but it will also "satisfice" for most problems.