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Quantity over Quality

Great life lesson from the story of a pottery class. Of the group of the group of students who were to be graded by quality not quantity of their work the author says:

".. sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay."

Such is the fate of any group of people who are tasked to deliver something exceptional while being observed, scrutinized and critiqued for their efforts. The group gets into stasis mode very quickly, unable to function at their full capacity. Good enough does not satisfy anyone and yet they cannot agree on what best looks like. I have seen this scene replay more times than I can count in the workplace over the years. 

The end product of such a team is uninspiring at best. What is ironic that in real life, these rules of grading are neither published nor public. It is only implied which makes things that much more complicated. It takes a combination of being thick-skinned and audacious to go against the tide of norm and expectation to do what feels right, dust of the defeats that follow and try again - build up quantity so that quality will eventually follow like for those students in the pottery class.

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