“What idiot did this?”

How often have you looked at a setup and said one of these?

• “Well, that’s stupid”
• “That’s not how it’s done”
• “I wouldn’t have set it up that way”

And how often have you found yourself in a situation where you are setting something up and thought:

• “Well, if we had more budget we’d do it ‘properly’”
• “This’ll do for now, I’ll come back to it later”
• “If we were starting from scratch we’d do it this way, but we’ve still got that other system”

You’ve got to start from where you are

Resource pressures are ever present. If we have the time, we don’t have the money. If we have the money we don’t have the time.

Or – we delude ourselves into thinking that if we don’t have time now, of course we will in the future.

But even if we are blessed with all the money and all the time – it’s almost impossible to avoid the challenges of the existing environment.

It’s rare that we get the opportunity to create a “greenfield” setup – usually we have existing “things” that complicate any improvements, or dictate how any improvements are carried out.

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good

So – if we can’t do the ideal, what do we do?

Simple – we do something.

Is it perfect? No.

Is it better than yesterday? Yes.

That’s good enough – done is better than perfect.

Assume best intentions

Last year I did some work with Tessitura consultants, and they have a principle of approaching their work with others by assuming best intentions. The presume that everyone involved wants to make improvements, wants to make things better, and are working at the best of their ability.

They did the best they could

When looking back at the work we’ve done we’ll often acknowledge the lack of perfection, but we are aware of the limitations that were present. We make allowances. We give ourselves a pass.

When looking at the work of others after the fact – we either can’t see those limitations, or we don’t take them into account. We judge just the work, out of context. We don’t make allowances. We don’t give our predecessors a pass.

We should be as generous to those that came before us as we are to ourselves. We should assume best intentions.

Would I have done it differently?

So, next time you think “what idiot did this?”, ask yourself – if you were faced with the same situation and constraints as your predecessor – would you really have done anything substantially different?

Often the answer is either “probably not” – or more likely – “I don’t know enough about the situation in the past to decide either way”.

If the current situation isn’t perfect, look for ways that you can push it towards perfect. And be aware that your successors will probably view your work with a “what idiot did this?”!