Progress and Process

[Moonchild]

Well, first of all, I'm both proud and glad to be a part of these forums, though it's been a while and I miss everyone here, from the updates I've been getting by email it seems that a lot of progress has been made, and congrats especially to both Dave and Tormod!

 

Anways, I've been having this unique thought at the back of my mind, and I want to get it off my back and maybe get some responses.

 

In a business firm/corporation my dad's involved with, one of their sayings is "Progress, not perfection." And I thought, how true! But then I realized something: perfection is a desired result, whereas progress is a realistic result - yet progress is still a result. Anyone serious about progress should not live by this saying. I thought to myself, 'What's the missing piece?' Then I realized the keyword was: Process.

It is like the difference between a plan and a goal. A lot of people talk about their new years resolutions, essentially a list of goals. But often these goals are never fulfilled. Why? Because there is no plan to reach or attain the goal.

In the same way, progress cannot be made without a process by which to reach that progress. There are a number of processes, but only one or a few truly lead to a positive progress. And that right process, that every time leads to progress, is perfection.

[Buffy]

OOoooh definitely! I may be the resident MBA around here, so I can babble for hours about this stuff. I definitely agree with your analysis of the difference between progress and perfection. Process is important for a bunch of reasons, but relevant here is that it impacts the valuation of the amount of progress over time--heck, it may even force reevaluation of perfection. Also missing from the equation, but which can be solved by the process, is rules for setting and evaluating reasonable but aggressive goals. If the goals are not aggressive enough, you can always have measurable progress but still not do anything terribly useful.

 

The process also has to get you to think outside the box, or the progress will get increasingly "inbred": "If you don't go beyond what you know, you'll be stuck in it for the rest of your stinking lives!" (from "Up the Down Staircase"). That means that one of the most important processes in the process is reevaluating and modifying the process over time... :hyper:

 

Cheers,

Buffy

[Queso]

buffy dissapeared, and i'm curious moonchild-- is your name reffering to the old king crimson song? mannn those guys were good!

[C1ay]

buffy dissapeared

 

I wonder why sometimes. The way she dropped out just seemed odd to me. She made it to the Top 15 list in short order and then poof. I hope it wasn't one of life's gremlins.