99% is the honest 100%

Sometimes, we’re going to screw it up.

The project. The presentation. The conversation. We’ll do the wrong thing, slip up, misunderstand.

• Customer satisfaction won’t be 100%. Not if we serve enough people. Eventually, there will be a small few that mess up our “perfect 100%”.
• Some ideas or implementations will flop. The 3rd Gen iPod Shuffle. Google Buzz. The Ford Pinto. Can’t win ‘em all.
• Sometimes we’re just going to screw up. The conditions were perfect, you just didn’t get it right. The side of teamwork and entrepreneurship nobody talks about.

We can’t know what the future holds, and every team will mess up sometimes. We can merely choose to be our best, daily.

99% is as perfect as we’ll ever be. 99% is the honest 100%.