If it's good enough for you...

This year I have been fortunate to be an attendee on a personal development course on women and leadership in higher education. In various conversations with other attendees, ‘role models’ and mentors connected with the course I have heard mentioned several times the idea that, as a leader, you need to become comfortable with doing work that is ‘good enough’ rather than spending a disproportionate amount of extra time making marginal improvements.

This comment is invariably solicits nods of agreement and that’s all well and good. Except I’ve thought about it a bit more and now I’m not so sure.

Part of my job involves helping academic staff in developing new courses. I work with amazingly committed people, trying to create exciting, relevant programmes for undergraduate and postgraduate students. In this context, the best outcome is unlikely to be achieved by people producing work that is ‘just’ good enough.

If you are engaged in work that you care about, is it possible to feel good about turning out less than your best? Can you feel proud about good enough? Or does the satisfaction of quantity ticked off a to-do list outweigh the lack of pride in its quality?

I’m not sure I can advocate a style of work were consistently putting in less than your best is acceptable.  How does that make you feel?

I don’t think there are many lecturers who would feel happy about a lecture where they didn’t strive for the best they could do.

Does the innovation, new discovery, breakthrough ever happen without the extra effort?

On reflection I can see how the idea of good enough might be appropriate for some kinds of work but attention to detail, well, the devil’s in the detail isn’t it?

 

Some Personal Development

Just before Christmas, the group of beginner cellists that I have been playing with for over a year, Oxford Cellists, took part in a tango workshop. We played a selection of tangos whilst dancers performed. Below are a couple of photos from that lovely evening. To me dancing the tango seemed a lot harder than playing the cello.

http://www.facebook.com/oxfordcellists

Photo: Julia Diamantis

Photo: Julia Diamantis

In January, I found myself on a coach to London to enrol as a doctoral student at the Institute of London. This is, pehaps, the end of the beginning as Churchill said, of a process that started a year ago with the birth of this blog. One of my first entries was about becoming a 'fully cooked person' and doctoral studies is as much a part of that for me as my cello playing.

"When someone is described as fully cooked I think it means they have experience and knowledge, and they have learnt much. It's sort of the opposite of saying a person is a raw beginner - that they are 'uncooked'. I suppose it's strange to talk about oneself as nearly fully cooked, or almost ready to serve. I don't know why I have always used this term to describe myself and other people, nor do I know where it comes from. The connection to food is a useful one though. Quite often you meet a person for the first time and they appear to you to be an adult, grown up and mature. Then, as you get to know them better, you realise that actually they are not that at all. They are like a pudding taken too early from the oven. It looks cooked on the outside but inside it's still got a way to go before it's ready. This happens the other way round as well, when you meet an incrediby sage young person, who you expected to be inexperienced in life.

I'm not saying it's disappointing to find that people aren't fully cooked. Becoming a cooked person takes a long time for some people, maybe a lifetime." Georgina Dalton, February, 2012

Institute of Education, London

Becoming Fully Cooked - Try Something New

Part of developing as a person, of becoming fully cooked as I describe it, is being open to learning. Learning something generally begins with trying new things. Most of us are willing to try new things but we are less good at sticking with them in order to benefit from the learning part. This is because learning tends to involve at least a small element of effort aka work.

I have a personal rule of trying something at least three times before I decide it's not for me but recently I discovered this TED clip by Matt Cutts who tries something new for 30 days.

A month is long enough to establish a habit and to achieve real goals or at least clear progress towards them. Since most of us are time poor, Matt's idea is that in order to create the space to try something new for 30 days, you would also give up something - usually something that's not adding a great deal to your life - watching TV trash, mindless internet surfing etc. 

So far using Matt's basic principles, I have managed to practice on my cello for at least half an hour everyday whilst decreasing my TV consumption. It's interesting how quickly, once you just accept you are going to do something, it just becomes part of your day. I've been rewarded by seeing (or is that hearing?) a real improvement in my playing. I'm still a beginner but I've a bigger and better repetoire and I'm closer to my dream of being a cellist.

Coincidently this article from the New York Times captures very well the joy of beginning to play a musical instrument once past childhood.

Nearly A Fully Cooked Person

So what does fully cooked mean?

When someone is described as fully cooked I think it means they have experience and knowledge, and they have learnt much. It's sort of the opposite of saying a person is a raw beginner - that they are 'uncooked'. I suppose it's strange to talk about oneself as nearly fully cooked, or almost ready to serve. I don't know why I have always used this term to describe myself and other people, nor do I know where it comes from. The connection to food is a useful one though. Quite often you meet a person for the first time and they appear to you to be an adult, grown up and mature. Then, as you get to know them better, you realise that actually they are not that at all. They are like a pudding taken too early from the oven. It looks cooked on the outside but inside it's still got a way to go before it's ready. This happens the other way round as well, when you meet an incrediby sage young person, who you expected to be inexperienced in life.

I'm not saying it's disappointing to find that people aren't fully cooked. Becoming a cooked person takes a long time for some people, maybe a lifetime.