p.1 It is generally impossible to move to greatness without first treading
the path of good... It’s foundational. You build great on the firm footing of good enough... The world
runs on good enough.
p.1 Good enough is shaped by unrelenting pressure for progress toward a higher level of fitness in a continuously
shifting environment. It invariably involves trade-offs and compromises. Patching a crack in a dam doesn’t require
a lot of concern for aesthetics. The thing just needs to hold. The situation won’t wait for great. In reality,
most environments don’t afford the luxury of greatness. Things change too fast. Spending too much time seeking
greatness is a sure path to becoming mismatched and irrelevant in a rapidly shifting landscape that leaves you behind.
Better to be good enough moving quickly toward being good enough again, and then again and again.
p.1 When Charles Lindbergh made his historic flight across the Atlantic,
his aircraft, The Spirit of St. Louis, was frail compared with those used by others competing for the Ortieg prize*.
The plane was built on a budget. There was no forward visibility because it lacked a windshield. And it had but one seat.
There was no room for a copilot to provide relief during the 33-hour flight. The plane was good enough. Lindbergh
had learned to barnstorm on a budget and understood what was good enough to stay safe.
p.2 Only someone lacking in experience or blinded by ego could seriously
try to lead toward greatness without acknowledging the fundamental importance of being good enough first... what lies
at the heart of some of health care’s most intractable challenges is a failure to get the "basics" right...
The basics are firmly positioned in the realm of the good, not the great.
*The Orteig Prize was a $25,000 reward offered on May 19, 1919, by New York hotel owner Raymond Orteig to
the first allied aviator(s) to fly non-stop from New York City to Paris or vice-versa. On offer for five years, it attracted
no competitors. Orteig renewed the offer for another five years in 1924 when the state of aviation technology had advanced
to the point that numerous competitors vied for the prize. [Wikipedia]
