Have you ever heard anyone say "that's good enough for government work"? What about "that's good enough for church"?
The church at large is sometimes plagued with the disease of mediocrity. This really bothers me because the church has the greatest message ever told and as a result needs the greatest effort in sharing that message.
Check out this info from Seth Godin about what a little less or a little more effort will result in.
Doing 4% less does not get you 4% less.
Doing 4% less may very well get you 95% less.
That's because almost good enough gets you nowhere. No sales, no votes, no customers. The sad lie of mediocrity is the mistaken belief that partial effort yields partial results. In fact, the results are usually totally out of proportion to the incremental effort.
Big organizations have the most trouble with this, because they don't notice the correlation. It's hidden by their momentum and layers of bureaucracy. So a mediocre phone rep or a mediocre chef may not appear to be doing as much damage as they actually are.
The flip side of this is that when you are at the top, the best in the world, the industry leader, a tiny increase in effort and quality can translate into huge gains. For a while, anyway.
