The battle between perfection and “good enough”
There’s one thing from CASE that has been lingering in my mind ever since the conference - in his presentation Sree Sreenivasan touched on the battle between our desire for perfection and putting out something that’s “good enough.” The context here was in discussing the Flip camera. A Flip is not the most high tech, picture perfect quality thing on the market…but what it produces is good enough. Our users would probably never be the wiser that the final product was shot on something that retails for less than $150.
All too often in higher ed, we get bogged down seeking perfection, when something that is good enough will do just as well. I can tell horror stories about tying up hours of time from five or six employees in search of the perfect Facebook Ad. Yes, you heard me right - FACEBOOK AD. The picture had to be designed just right and the copy had to be written and edited and it had to be mocked up so the client could see what it would actually look like in Facebook, etc. It was absolutely ridiculous.
We will never begin to achieve efficiency in higher education until we acknowledge that perfection is not always worth the extra time and resources. Let’s look at the Facebook Ad example - these things take five minutes to create and have a limited number of ways to customize it. Is pumping six hours and the manpower of five to six people into it going to make a product that is significantly more effecitive than the ad that took five minutes to make? No. So bang it out and move on to the next thing.
Striving for perfection isn’t a bad thing, but we need to be realistic about what can be accomplished with our resources. “Army of One” was another thing that has stuck with me since the conference - if you simply don’t have the man power, you can only do so much and making yourself satisfied with achieving “good enough” is probably going to be the key to not driving yourself crazy.
Can you think of projects where “good enough” will do? Leave a comment!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Like what you read here? Subscribe to this blog through RSS or sign up to receive email updates when new content is posted.
Hire Karlyn: Karlyn is the President & Principal Consultant of DoJo Web Strategy, a consultancy dedicated to helping colleges and universities to utilize the web in their marketing efforts. Find out how she can help your institution by requesting a proposal today »
April 20th, 2009
The same statement struck me in Sree’s talk. We can sometimes get so bogged down in predicting disaster that we lose sight of the immediacy of the web. Unless it is so bad it does real harm to your brand, try it and take it down if it doesn’t work.
I do think all of this should be viewed in context. I have talked to h.s. students about this very issue and their satisfaction with “good enough” depends largely on meeting their expectations. If you set the expectation that something is professionally produced and representative of the best your school offers, they will expect your best (i.e. the admissions video or your top-level website). They still want to see that you care enough and have enough money to provide a quality experience.
On the flip side (no pun intended), they are much more forgiving of a short video clip of an event and an accompanying story if it’s published with some immediacy. Better to get the big news out right away than days later when it’s already considered “old”.
April 20th, 2009
I’ve been preaching this to our team for some time now. It doesn’t mean we cut corners or put out a half-assed effort… it means that not all things deserve the royal treatment. We must pick and choose where we spend our time and what is most important.
April 20th, 2009
I am glad you wrote on this topic. We have had a lot of success using flip cameras you just have to find the right projects. When you are going to put your president on video flip might not be the right tool but to highlight the annual chili cook-off it might be perfect!
April 20th, 2009
Amen, Karlyn. You some times have to let go of aspirations that every project has to be CASE-award worthy in order to just get it done and use everyone’s time and resources wisely.
April 20th, 2009
ABT… Always Be Testing.
Using the example you gave with the Facebook ads create 10 different ads in Facebook and run each of them in limited ad groups and see which one performs best. Ask yourself why to see if you can gain any insight from it then take the winners and toss in some new ideas and do it again.
I would ABSOLUTELY LOVE for you to have tested some ads that were thrown together in 5 minutes vs those 5hr times 5 people projects. I bet you at the end of the day they really didn’t perform all that different then you have your data to prove that it just wasn’t worth the time. Got to love data because it really helps you make great cases and when you check your ego at the door and really try to learn from the data the possibilities are endless.
Great post Karlyn!
April 22nd, 2009
SO TRUE! I worked in the software industry prior to my career in higher ed. Needless to say, ‘good enough’ is the at the center of the business model for the software industry (hence the need for versions 1.0, 2.0, 2.1, etc). The need for perfection in the higher ed space MAKES ME NUTS!!! I can’t tell you how many (very viable and worthy) projects have been hijacked (and in some cases completely derailed) by a team of people who sought perfection. Let’s not even talk about that fact that most of the times these people should have never even been included in the project in the first place, but that is a blog post for another time (hint…hint Karlyn). Perhaps this need for perfection is a natural side-effect of working in higher ed….maybe these perfectionists approach everything as though they will be graded…and they all want A’s.
April 22nd, 2009
hahaha Nancy you are going to get me in trouble! You know what Kissinger said - University politics are so vicious because the stakes are so small
April 22nd, 2009
“Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good” is one of the few quotes I have hanging in my office
Projects can become casualties in the pursuit for perfection, both in terms of the project that is incomplete because perfection is sought and the back-burner project that doesn’t see the light of day because of the pursuit of perfection in a front-burner project.
There is a related litmus test: If a competing school did _____, would you be worried because they did something good enough to get positive results vs. your own school not doing it at all?
Another of the few quotes hanging in my office, also related to this topic: “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” - Peter F. Drucker