As you may know, I love this expression: “Perfect is the enemy of good.” Too often, in organizations and in life, we’re so consumed with the notion that something has to be just right that we get stuck in our own quest for perfection and never make any progress.

That's why I love this column by Ralph Keller in Industry Week. His topic is continuous improvement, but his advice applies to so many situations.

Here are a few highlights:

• “If your . . . leaders . . . think they have to get it 'right' when the team works on a process, they will get caught up in 'analysis paralysis' instead of 'Just Do It' and take forever to implement anything.”
• “The truly outstanding organizations . . . are great at celebrating the efforts and the small wins, not insisting on achieving the goals set by management and punishing those who fail to achieve them.”
• “If you want something that will do exactly what it’s told to do and will repeat the process exactly each and every time, get a machine, because people don’t and they introduce process variability. Along with that, however, you get creativity, problem solving and the ability to improve and make the process better.”
• “Always remember that good is better than nothing, and it’s not the end.”

Great stuff!