Don't let the best be the enemy of the good

I became aware of this adage a few years ago and have always considered it one of the most revealing but challenging of adages. It encapsulates a conundrum we all find difficulty resolving.

Given a particular outcome you wish to achieve with particular attributes, you can always anticipate barriers to achieving that outcome. The nature of those barriers often means that you can get someway or even most of the way towards your goal with some relative ease but that getting the last few details right involves excrutiating effort or unpleasant trade-off decisions. Sometimes raw persistence can carry you to your outcome but at tremendous cost.

The adage counsels that you consider accepting something less than your ideal outcome in order to avoid the cost of getting just exactly what you wanted. Better to accept 90% of what you were shooting for at 30% of the cost than to achieve 100% of your desired outcome but at a much higher cost.

Well and good. But what are the trade-off percentages. Colin Powell once counseled that a General can never be effective if he always waits for all the information he needs in order to make a decision. I believe his number was 70%; when you have 70% of the information you want, the benefit of prompt action outweighs the risks associated with waiting to get 100% of the information.

In the end, there isn't a numerical answer. Like a good lawyer, consultant or Jesuit, the answer is that it depends. The adage is useful for predisposing you to action but it does not give you guidance as to when enough is enough.

Today, I came across a reference that seems to attribute this adage, which I thought to be just a piece of folk wisdom, to Voltaire, rendered as "the perfect is the enemy of the good." I'll have to investigate that at some point.