The Least Worst Option

Before you can be great, you must first not suck

I am often in situations where there are no “good” outcomes - i.e. no outcomes I would freely choose. However a decision still has to be made and there still has to be an outcome.

What I require is the “least worst outcome”. I find that in discussions people tend to rehash the things that are bad which is not helpful because we all know that things are bad. We’ve talked about this badness two or three or more times previously. And now we have to decide. Let us accept there are no good outcomes. Let us try to find the least worst.

Likewise, many of the organizations that I have worked for have often been a bit crap at stuff. There have been some things they have been great at. But they are crap at everything else. But everyone else is also crap so it doesn’t matter. Performance is mostly relative not absolute.

In these situations, you should not be aiming for greatness. Many organizations have delusions of adequacy. So you should first stop sucking. You should certainly seek to suck the least compared to your peers. You may even decide to go above and beyond and actually be OK.

We have a discourse of high achievement and awesomeness that seems oddly disconnected from the mediocre world that we inhabit and enact. We have Rolls Royce speech and Reliant Robin actions.

I am firmly committed to sucking a little less on average over time.

Me, yesterday