Up to Speed Excerpt
Chapter 10: When Good Isn’t Good Enough
“Good morning, this is John Jones, your pilot. We’ll be flying down to Miami today. The weather in Miami is 85 and sunny, and we don’t expect any turbulence in route. By the way, I’m very excited about flying today. I just graduated from flight school with a 90% score on my landing test. That’s an A in anybody’s book.”
Ninety percent is a good score on any test. However, in this case, it’s simply not good enough. I’m sure you can imagine all the passengers pushing to the exits to try and get off this plane. There are many examples of jobs where anything less than 100% isn’t good enough. Do you expect your pharmacist to get your prescription filled 100% correctly? Getting it wrong could be deadly.
In some jobs, even small mistakes have huge consequences. I worked in a factory where they made resins. Resins are a result of a chemical reaction caused by mixing various components in large kettle-like vats. Adding chemicals in the wrong order in wrong amounts can cause a runaway reaction that can quickly burn the plant to the ground. There is simply no room for error.