Everything does not have to be a work of art I tell someone who is preparing an internal document for me. The goal is to get as much done as we can, within reason. Knowing what can be 90% and what can't be can sometimes be a bit tricky.

No one is tougher on ensuring things are done right than I am but at the same time, probably no one says 90% is also okay as much as I do. I believe the ability to shift between being the stickler and also being the 90% person is a skill you want to acquire.

I know the next question will be, okay, how do I acquire that special skill? I was afraid you were going to ask that one. I wish there was a simple easy answer, as usual there is not. Let's try this explanation.

What would you rather have 3 processes in you operations at 100% and have to not include two more that could be beneficial to you, OR, have all 5 processes in your operation, with all of them at 80%? Posses an interesting dilemma does it not. Thinking about this dilemma is a major step forward to increasing your productivity and moving forward on all fronts that will benefit you.

You will find that this is a constant dilemma, balancing available time and resources with the need to get things done. It's a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. You want to do 5 things to day but you only have time to do 4. What is a person to do? You can start to borrow time from one task and add it to another. This is where the 90% completeness angle comes in.

The closer you get to 100%, the more time it takes to get the final percentages accomplished. The time it takes to get to the first 50% of the job takes up much less time than it takes to get the last 50% of the same job accomplished. This disparity in time versus amount accomplished widens the closer you get to 100%. The final 10% of the job will take 2 or 3 times more time to finish than the time it takes to get from 70% or 80% to 90%.

What this all means is this, you have to decide if this disportionate amount of time to reach the final 10% is worth it to you when that time could be better spent on starting and finishing another task.

The fact that you may not have given this concept any thought in the past and you are now aware of it is enough for now. This concept is what I call a fine tuning thought process; it is just another piece of the puzzle that now, will hopefully play a role when you look at your production issues.