Last week, I attended a concert at my son’s school, where the orchestra played the music piece “A+” by Thomas Duffy. This piece is an excellent illustration of our tolerance for mistakes.

It is a very difficult piece for an orchestra to play because 3 percent of the notes are actually out of tune. With a length of 3:43, it’s fairly quick to listen to. (If time is limited, start at the 2:50 mark.) You can hear right from the beginning that something seems off, and it gets progressively “worse.” When we listen to the piece, our ears and minds focus on the errors, and it’s easy to think that it all sounds wrong. However, with a 3-percent error rate, it would still get an A+. Yet we think it’s not good enough. We would probably think the same if we read a book with 3 percent of its content containing typos. Not good enough – awful editing!

The mindset we bring to many experiences is this: We expect perfection – instead of merely excellence as an A+ would suggest. While this is an understandable mindset when it comes to listening to music or reading books, it can get in our way of finding a new solution because of our expectations. In truth, anything new that we start is likely to be less than polished and “rough around the edges.”

Is perfection the right standard when someone pitches a new idea? Is it the right standard at the launch of a new project? Honestly, it would get us further if we could just focus on the progress and determine if the progress is sufficient to continue. Even though we may want to attain mastery and eventually move above the A+, maybe a C is the best possible start (far better than an A+).

Make it real

Next week, pay attention to your own expectations and “acceptable error rate.” Are your expectations useful to the situation? Are they encouraging or discouraging for others, and how does your acceptable error rate impact the environment?