Is good good enough?

I love the book, “From Good to Great.” It can teach you a lot of good things that’s for sure.

But I am not a big fan of it’s first lesson — and it is the lesson you get from the title: good isn’t good enough. By it’s definition, you don’t want to stop at good. You want to keep going to great. Why stop at good, when you can have great.

I get the concept, I really do. I understand that drive for excellence, for greatness. But I found it tiring.

And then I read something in Genesis that transformed how I look at business, and how I look at the word good.

I appreciate that not everyone is a fan of the Bible. This is not a sermon. It is just a lesson I learned from reading it.

The book of Genesis tells us how God created the world in six distinct stages. He starts with separating light and darkness and carries on until man is created on the 6th day. What was so interesting to me was that end of each distinct phase — when the goal was complete — God said that it was good.

Good was good enough for God, so why wasn’t it good enough for me? Why did out marketing have to be a 10 out 10 every time? Why did I have to feel it was excellent? Why did I have to say, “that’s good, but is it great?” Why couldn’t I follow God’s lead on this?

I changed my thinking. Now, my aim is to make sure that each element, each distinct stage, reaches the level of good.

Not only is that freeing for me and the team, not only have I stopped chasing perfection and given people room to fail without being condemned but I discovered the second secret revealed in Genesis.

Each distinct phase was good. But then Genesis tells us how God steps back and looks at the whole thing, together as one completed project, not as individual elements. And when He did that, the Bible tells us that it was very good.

Principle 1: aim to make each distinct phase good.

Principle 2: when the individual components are good, collectively they become very good.

By chasing good, we get great. We don’t need to chase great. It comes when we make things good. And that is good news.

It turns out good is good enough.