I go through the same thing with my son… when he got a computer we agreed there would be no games on a school night unless he has all A’s. Having a B+ and some A’s is a great accomplishment as well, but doesnt get the reward!

The only thought i have to add was that i was not speaking of 95% of perfection but 95% of an agreed upon goal (lot of this depends on the quality of the relationship, culture and communication) and the rewards for reaching the the full goal.

The Financial Planning process (budgets) can have a lot of posturing, high balling and low balling. i’ve got 3 rules

1) Beat the competition (a for real benchmark, not some made up patsy group)
2) Beat last year and most important of all
3) Don’t leave anything on the table.

The last one is the most subjective but i close w/ a quote from JFK’s “Man on the Moon w/in the Decade” speech:

“We do these things and others, not because they are easy but because they are hard.”

Like the speed of light, perfection is an ideal that we can approach with ever-increasing effort, but never achieve. Isn’t it better to do nine things very well than one thing perfectly?

One might argue that I’m describing planning or strategy development, while you described a leadership technique. I do agree that facing an inflexible standard can motivate someone to do better than they would have done without it. But conversely failing to meet an inflexible standard is demotivating!

What did I read the other day on this site? “The secret is balance.” “The journey is the destination.” What about appreciating every bit of progress on the journey, and not just the destination?

– According to the article, if 99.9% is good enough then…

• 103,260 income tax returns will be processed incorrectly this year.

• 22,000 checks will be deducted from the wrong bank accounts in the next sixty minutes.

• 1,314 phone calls will be mis-routed every minute.

• 12 babies will be given to the wrong parents each day.

• 5,517,200 cases of soft drinks produced in the next twelve months will be flatter than a bad tire.

• Two plane landings daily at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago will be unsafe.

• 18,322 pieces of mail will be mishandled in the next hour.

• 291 pacemaker operations will be performed incorrectly this year.

• 880,000 credit cards in circulation will turn out to incorrect cardholder information on their magnetic strips.

• 20,000 incorrect drug prescriptions will be written in the next twelve months.

• And 107 incorrect medical procedures will be performed by the end of the day today.