Be content with your lot; one cannot be first in everything.

A good plan violently executed right now is far better than a perfect plan executed next week.

There is a difference between being called and being driven

Before this activity, write "X" on one slip of paper. Add this slip to a bowl containing enough blank slips of paper for all participants to have one. Gather three clear glasses full of water, a spoon, and spoonful of dirt, and a few dead insects. To begin the activity, say, "One of you has chosen a slip of paper with an X on it. Here is your assignment: You represent a congregant or a potential congregant." Line up the three glasses of water and say, "Here are three glasses of water. In one, I'll put just a little bit of dirt, not much, not enough to hurt you." Stir in a teaspoon of soil into the water, then say, "In this glass, I'll put a couple of small bugs; they are minute compared to the amount of water in the glass." Drop in a dead insect, then say, "Now, the person representing a current or potential churchgoer has to drink from one of these glasses." Unless the person is a joker, he or she will choose the clean water. Use this analogy to show how people choose among competing alternatives. Church leaders often excuse their flaws or missteps by saying, "Our church is just a little flawed. We make so few mistakes compared to everything we do right. People won't see the mistakes, and if they do, they'll overlook them. We can get away with it."

John Ortberg in his book, If You Want to Walk on Water, You Have to Get Out of the Boat, tells about a ceramics teacher who divided his class into 2 groups: One group was to be graded solely on quantity of work: 50 pounds of pottery would be an A, 40 would be a B, and so on. The other group would be graded on quality. Students in this group only had to produce one pot, but it had to be a good one. Amazingly, the highest quality pots were turned in by the quantity group. It seems that while they kept churning out pots, they were continually learning from their disasters and growing as artists. The quality group sat around theorizing about perfection and worrying about it. But they never actually got any better. Apparently, trying, failing, learning from failure, and trying again works a lot better than waiting for perfection.

"A perfectionist is a man who has a general impression of what is good, but a specific impression of bad."

The pursuit of excellence is gratifying and healthy. The pursuit of perfection is frustrating, neurotic, and a terrible waste of time." --

Good, Better, Best. Never rest until good be better And better best. --

Andy Grove on Leadership

[Note that quote comes from a transcript of the talk that the folks at Harvard gave me (Bob Sutton). I have edited out a few lines, in part, because Grove made some comments about the Soprano’s TV show that were funny, but distract from the main point]. Grove said: "None of us have a real understanding of where we are heading. I don’t. I have senses about it... But decisions don’t wait, investment decisions or personal decisions and prioritization don't wait for that picture to be clarified. You have to make them when you have to make them. So you take your shots and clean up the bad ones later. And try not to get too depressed in the part of the journey, because there’s a professional responsibility. If you are depressed, you can't motivate your staff to extraordinary measures. So you have to keep your own spirits up even though you well understand that you don’t know what you’re doing." Then, Clay Christensen asked, "So how do you work on that part about keeping good spirits or managing emotional response, leading your team." Grove answered: "Well, part of it is self-discipline and part of it is deception. And the deception becomes reality -- deception in the sense that you pump yourself up and put a better face on things than you start off feeling. After a while, if you act confident, you become more confident. So the deception becomes less of a deception. But I think it is very important for you to do two things: act on your temporary conviction as if it was a real conviction; and when you realize that you are wrong, correct course very quickly."