Good enough. I can’t think of two words that better describe American apathy and a lack of pride in their workmanship. Do you think our forefathers ever would have broken free from the shackles of Mother England if they had merely thought things were “good enough?” We used to be a nation of craftsman, not simply producers, we had skilled laborers, not bodies to get through the production cycle. We strove to be the best, but somewhere along the way someone decided that “good enough” was.
Was it our best? No, but it was “good enough.” A lazy man’s way of saying “I’m only putting in the marginal effort even if I could do better.” I see it everywhere, look at our automobile industry. Do you think Henry Ford stopped with the Model T because it was “good enough?” No, he made it better, cheaper and found innovative ways to build it, because “good enough” wasn’t. He wanted to be the best. Maybe not necessarily the best car, but definitely the best car company. I recognize this fact and I’m not even a Ford fan.
The automotive industry found itself in dire trouble and needing bail outs because of the predominant “good enough” attitude. It’s hard to escape the grip of that attitude when unions promote safe haven work places where a worker has no incentive to do his best when he can get paid the same amount for doing work that is only “good enough.” The bailouts haven’t entirely erased this way of building cars either. I still see it in cars today.
The first new model to roll off the assembly line from a manufacturer who hadn’t had a new model in over a year thanks to the economic downturn, still had gaps I could fit my fingers into up to the second knuckle on one side of the rear hatch, but tolerances more inline with the rest of the vehicles build on the other side of the hatch that I couldn’t even get the tip of my pinky into. I can only imagine somewhere down the assembly line somebody decided that was “good enough,” but it wasn’t. There’s not a single foreign manufacturer currently importing or building cars in the U.S. that has tolerances that far out of whack. So why is it “good enough” for U.S. manufacturers? I argue that it’s no pride in their work, just a desire to do only what’s “good enough.”
It’s not just the automotive industry either. I see it everywhere, from IT jobs to vending machines. We have a vending machine here at work that constantly has large bottles dispensed from the second row get hung up between the next level down and the side of the machine as they plummet to the dispenser door below. Moving the beverage to be sold from another location in the machine, even the third row, would most likely solve the problem once and for all. Instead the vendor continually opts for the easy way out, removing the jammed energy drink when it happens. This is “good enough,” but only until it happens next week. In the mean time, people who use the machine get frustrated that they’ve lost their money and other people can’t use the machine because the jammed product is blocking several other rows. All the while, the vending machine operator is losing money. The easy way may seem good enough, but clearly it isn’t.
Don’t even get me started on the two hours I spent sorting through poorly laid out site architecture that is going to continue to produce additional technical issues because someone didn’t lay the ground work properly because it would have taken more work, and instead settled for “good enough”–and it isn’t. Now we are too far into it to change it without breaking the whole site, so instead we will have to settle for continually correcting smaller scale errors that are caused by the poorly designed architecture. All the hours wasted fixing those errors thus far have taken far more time than if the initial designer had taken the extra ten minutes to set up the directories properly to begin with. Again, what was good enough to finish the job ten minutes sooner is not “good enough” down the road.
I can only think of one company in this world that can afford to settle for “good enough,” and that company is Apple. The only reason they can ship a product that is merely “good enough” is because nobody else’s product is. But what Steve and the Apple Corps. are doing is smart. They aren’t resting on “good enough,” they are developing the next level of “good enough” before the competition even has a chance to catch up to the current version of “good enough” and you don’t even realize that what you’re buying is only “good enough.”
Think about it, iPhone without video capabilities even though other phones already had it. The rest of the phone was so far advanced that they could ship it without, and offer it in the next version forcing you to upgrade. Brilliant. Not only does this strategy keep Apple ahead of the game, but ensures a steady stream of upgrades as people continually trade up to the next big thing. Each new version of their product puts the onus of what’s good enough on the consumer instead of Apple. It’s up to you, the consumer, to buy the next version if you want to have the best instead of what’s now blatantly obvious as only “good enough.”
If only we pursued beyond the “good enough” envelope in everything we did instead of just our electronic gadgets. i believe we could be great again if we did. If we really want to fix the economy and the automotive industry and become a great nation of craftsman and skilled laborers again, we need to follow Mr. Jobs example. But first we have to stop settling for “good enough,” and start building things the best we can again–not just “good enough,” but, better than the rest. We need to be the front runners–those who set the standard that others try to meet. Once we do that, then, and only then, can we decide what’s good enough and leave our audience eagerly anticipating our next big thing, leaving “good enough” to last years model, and our competitors.
Until that happens, “good enough,” isn’t.