Is that the best you can do?

Over on the SensePost blog Haroon tells the story about how he returned a report back to an analyst saying "once more with feeling..."

This reminded me of a story I read where Henry Kissinger kept asking Winston Lord "Is this the best you can do?" when he handed him a draft policy paper. After 9 attempts of revising the document the staffer finally replies in exasperation yes and Kissinger says "Good, now I'll read it..."

Here is the full story as told by Winston Lord himself

Well, basically it was, I went in with a draft, and it was actually of a presidential foreign policy report. This is slightly apocryphal and not directly on your subject here, but I would go in with a draft of the speech. He called me in the next day and said, "Is this the best you can do?" I said, "Henry, I thought so, but I'll try again." So I go back in a few days, another draft. He called me in the next day and he said, "Are you sure this is the best you can do?" I said, "Well, I really thought so. I'll try one more time." Anyway, this went on eight times, eight drafts; each time he said, "Is this the best you can do?" So I went in there with a ninth draft, and when he called me in the next day and asked me that same question, I really got exasperated and I said, "Henry, I've beaten my brains out - this is the ninth draft. I know it's the best I can do: I can't possibly improve one more word." He then looked at me and said, "In that case, now I'll read it."

The sad thing is that in big corporations "almost good enough is almost always good enough". This is often not a function of the quality of work someone is capable of producing but of the organisational culture that plagues large bureaucracies and often perpetuates meaningless work. I've found that one of the key aspects to leading a group of smart people within such organisations is the ability to know when to except "almost good enough" from your people and when to demand exceptional performance.