How good is good enough?

Global competition for excellence everywhere is too challenging and too costly for individuals and organizations. Efficiency perfection desire led to lowered engagement and anxiety. Don’t pretend to be the best in everything – people prefer specialized solutions over the all-in-one approach. Wisely choose Your expertise and build the ecosystem where You can extend to specialized solutions where needed.

Don’t expect perfection in every single area but set good enough criteria.

Remember - Good enough is not mediocre – it's just putting the right focus on the right things!

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What is good enough?

The perceived value of goods and services is a sweet spot of:

• Technology (tools, infrastructure, procedures)
• Economy (money and efforts)
• Psychology (perception, behaviors, habits)

The sweet spot is this area where it is simply good enough.

?How to set good enough criteria that are in the sweet spot of perception?

Start with measuring the perception gap. Confront measured technology-related matrices like SLA - service level agreements, MTTR - mean time to resolve, CES - customer effort score, etc. with the perception of the users about them (use targeted surveys):

1. If the perception is lower than achieved technology matrices think about how to improve the perception, not technology
2. If the perception is higher than technology matrices redefine Your good enough criteria
3. Be creative and justify improvements in different areas (tech, psychology, economy) not prioritize any of them – always look for balance (sweet spot)

Stimulate excitement during the journey and ensure that people get what they asked for.

People (users, stakeholders, employees) will remember only two experiences – the one at the peak (most excited or most annoyed) and the one at the end of the journey (did I get what I wanted).

Transparency and predictability are key to building excitement – people are less anxious If they know when things will happen and can track and be informed about the key milestones.

• Provide a clear and understandable view of what will happen next (playbooks and simplified process views)
• Use clock downs for the most annoying activities (i.e. waiting, shipment, resolution time, etc.)

Use perspective to set and manage expectations!

Perspective influences perception (is it better/worse than expected value)

• show benchmarks (time-related, geography-related, market-related, department-related, service related)
• track individual cases compared to the MTTR/MTTD and act on any visible risk at every stage of the process

Give people control over their decisions but remember - too many selection options paralyze people's decisions (they will not use any available options at all). Manage selection options (not too many but not too few). Define profiles with predefined selection options and collect signals to advise (not push) on the most adequate personalized options.