Be an 80 Percent Leader

Thane Bellomo, Director of Talent Management and Organizational Development, MI Windows and Doors

I recently interviewed with an executive for a VP role in her organization. The conversation went well enough up until the moment I made what I call my ‘weeding out’ statement. I always use it in interviews to get a sense of whether the hiring manager and I will get along. I snuck it in when I was asked a question that went something like, ‘tell me about how you work.’ 

I answered, “Well I am typically an 80 Percent guy.” 

She looked puzzled, “What do you mean?” she asked.

I answered, “In my experience, 80 percent of the time, an 80 percent solution is perfectly good enough. And it’s often counterproductive to try to achieve a 100 percent solution in most situations.”

She literally recoiled from her camera as I said those words. Admirably, she immediately caught herself and maintained her professional demeanor. But it was too late. I saw the tell-tale sign that she and I would not do well working together. It seemed that one of my guiding philosophies had offended her sensibilities. That was a bad sign.

I wasn’t surprised though. Lots of people are wired like that. In most cases, they have been rewarded for striving for perfection all their lives. In school and work, we have been inculcated with a mindset that we should be working toward 100 percent. And we have been rewarded for that approach. After all, Magna Cum Laude’s built on this quest for perfection. As such, the age-old adage that ‘Bs get Degrees’ is derided and frowned upon as the slogan of the unmotivated, shiftless, and lazy. And yet, that adage matches the reality of the real world far better than the Magna Cum Laude.

It is sad that ‘Bs get Degrees’ is so hated because much time and resources are wasted trying to be perfect. In fact, it is a rare circumstance that perfection is worth pursuing at all. In the real world, time and resources are limited. We have a finite amount of attention widgets at our disposal; both personally and organizationally. And the cost curve increases exponentially as we approach perfection.

Certainly, there are some things that need to be pretty much perfect. If you are flying in an airplane, the operation and function of the craft need to be as close to 100 percent as possible. If you are operating a nuclear power plant, the perfect operation is part of the cost of doing business. And the operating costs of running a nuclear power plant reflect that.

But most of the things that we do in our lives and business do not require that kind of perfection. How perfect does your leadership program need to be? How perfect does that presentation need to be? How perfect do whatever process you are working on need to be? In most cases, they don’t need to be perfect, and you’ll spend a huge amount of time and energy trying to make them so. Time and energy that could be better spent creating value elsewhere in your organization.

In this light then, a critical leadership skill that every leader needs to have in their toolkit is the ability to discern when perfection is needed and when it is not. In fact, I will go so far as to say that, paradoxically, striving for perfection is a lazy way to lead and a lazy way to live. It is easy to simply say that everything is critically important and needs to be perfect. It is much more difficult to parse out the level of excellence that each thing we engage in is worth. It is much harder to operate within a band of performance and modulate our organizational effort to match the criticality of the need than it is to simply say everything needs to be 100 percent.

And yet, there are far too many leaders who subscribe to the myth of the perfect. And who can blame them? Most organizations reward the pursuit of excellence. And those leaders who were promoted for that characteristic often hire and promote those just like themselves. And so, a cult of perfection is built that rewards behaviors that are often at odds with effectively distributing work and effort in optimal ways.

It is a sad situation for an 80 percent guy like myself.  Rather than getting rewarded for parsing out how to operate within an effective band of performance, and how to discern the correct level of effort, 80 percent of people are punished and denigrated as lazy shirkers. My best recommendation for leaders, especially those 100 percent leaders out there, is to seek out your 80 percent people. Engage them in helping you figure out how to value the skill of modulating your effort according to the value of the work at hand. Ask them to help you understand when 80 percent is good enough. Doing so will save you much time and effort that you can direct elsewhere, and to greater value.

You may wonder where you might find such people. But we are everywhere. We can often be found languishing in roles where we have been pigeonholed, sometimes for years. Working out of a basement cubby and pining for the day when our skills are recognized for the value-creating engines that they truly are.