"No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking."— Voltaire, French Enlightenment writer and philosopher. While perfection may not be possible, there's no reason not to strive for it—as long as you don't focus so tightly on that goal you can't actually accomplish anything. Instead, by continually improving your systems, processes, and productivity over time, you’ll go from mediocre to superior. I realize some readers might look askance at this idea, since just about every CEO in America has read Jim Collins' 2001 book Good to Great. If upgrading from good to great were easy, then why do everyday companies still outnumber the great by a factor of hundreds to one? Surely, if the process worked, we'd have seen a flood of great companies by now—and clearly, we haven't. But … [Read more...]