So I was kicking back on the couch last night and flipped to one these -big time chefs comes to a restaurant to create drama and boot them in the behind- and the gears began to move.
I realized that when you’re producing a product doing 4 percent less does not get you 4 percent less but often get’s you 90 plus percent less.
It made me think about Jack Welch and what he did for GE in his tenure by “getting the workout.” The man literally got rid of all the programs and deadweight of the business created a precedent that said essentially, product and progression speak and that which is not needed should not be.
Almost good enough gets you nowhere no transactions, no support, and most important no customers. Seth Godin says, “the sad lie of mediocrity is the mistaken belief that partial effort yields partial results.” It so true, and rung that way for me when some Detroit restaurant served fake crab meat and the goons running the place couldn’t understand why the results were totally out of proportion to the incremental effort.
Welch had the foresight to recognize that this paradigm can be hidden in the large corporations 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. Welch also saw the flip side of this, 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.
Novagary 