Good Enough, PLEASE… Press On! (GEPPO)

GEPO – “Good Enough, Press On”.  I heard this saying for the first and only time in Banf, Canada while at a collective impact conference (in 2015, I believe) and it’s stuck with me ever since. Groups are forever overthinking, creating bottlenecks that are not useful or necessary, and getting stuck. They forget that sometimes a plan is good enough and it’s time to  press on to implementation.

So, since I live in South Carolina and need to add a little Southern charm to the mix, I’d like to make a little change to this acronym. Organizations, your “idea/concept/plan” is Good Enough, Please…Press On! (GEPPO).  There is always more information you can collect, more data to analyze, one more survey to send out…one can always dig, and dig, and keep digging. However, the very information you need is right at your fingertips, if you will only recognize that fact. It’s real time data from your customers, from your clients, patients, board members, team members. Success will only happen when you stop analyzing the data or information and start implementing. Your plan is good enough, so please, press on!

When you start implementing (on a small scale, because we are all about quality improvement), what happens will not be perfect. And that’s OK. You are going to get great info and then make changes, tweaks, and enhancements and watch to see what happens. And then do it all over again. That’s the whole point of continuous quality improvement. Your idea is GEPPO, so keep moving!  None of the articles, artificial intelligence robots, or pivot tables are going to tell you this. You are going to know this because you’re savvy enough to aim for good enough and not the ever-elusive perfection.

Stay Sharp

Holly Hayes, President & Founder
ISI Consulting