Most importantly, learn that "good enough is good enough." It's what I call "satisficing" in the book. You don't need the best; probably never do. On rare occasions it's worth struggling to find the best. But generally it makes life simpler if you settle with "good enough." You don't have to make an exhaustive search - just until you find something that meets your standards, which could be high. But the only way to find the absolute best is to look at ALL the possibilities. And in that case you'll either give up, or if you choose one, you'll be nagged by the possibility that you may have found something better.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Author Barry Schwartz says "good enough is good enough"
I haven't read his book, but in this interview Barry Schwartz (author of The Paradox of Choice), when asked what can customers do to avoid the paradox of choice, replies:
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Imagine you are an organisation with 5 million customers that you deal with each fortnight... let's say, Centrelink.
ReplyDeleteIf you are only 95% accurate with their data, that means you will stuff up the payments for 250,000 people per fortnight.
If you get it up to 99%, that means you'll only leave 50,000 people out in the cold.
Either way, that's unacceptable. Maybe you need to get to 99.9% and 5,000 people - that you then get queries from, and have to fix.
Didn't someone say that "near-enough" is only good enough with hand grenades and tactical nuclear weapons?
YMMV. ;-)
Yeah, David, you're right. It's starting to get complicated now! I suppose we'll have to modify that maxim to something like "Good enough is good enough, except where it isn't" or maybe "Good enough is good enough, when it's good enough." Crikey, now we're starting to consume our own tails, like the Ouroboros that I described in an earlier post: http://notestoneunturned.blogspot.com/2005/11/serendipitous-slitherings.html
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