Leaders Who Accept ‘Good Enough’ Risk Failure — Don’t Be One of Them

By the time Sen Rikyū was born in 16th-century Japan, tea ceremonies had already been a fixture of cultural life for around 700 years. You could say that, as a practice, society had them pretty down pat.

Rikyū loved tea. He first began studying it as a young man and underwent the rigorous training required to eventually become a tea master. Typically, that’s where most people stop — tea mastery takes a deep understanding of its technical aspects, as well as its history, aesthetics and philosophy. For most, reaching that level would be enough.

But Rikyū was not content with “enough.” Instead of reproducing past practices, he completely reimagined how tea ceremonies were orchestrated. He stripped the ceremony to its essentials, replacing ornate Chinese teaware with rustic bowls and grand reception halls with simple rooms no larger than two tatami mats. He lowered the entrances so even the most powerful guests had to bow to enter. Every element was reconsidered and refined.

What he inherited was already perfectly functional. But Rikyū believed that the status quo could still be improved upon. Just because something worked didn’t mean it couldn’t be better.

It’s a lesson that transcends centuries and industries: “good enough” may satisfy most people, but it’s rarely what creates lasting impact. Whether in art, craftsmanship or entrepreneurship, the difference between good and exceptional often comes down to the willingness to keep going long after others would have stopped.

Related: Don’t Settle For ‘Successful Enough’

The dangers of “good enough”

For entrepreneurs, “good enough” is a seductive trap. The product works, customers are paying for it and business is humming along. But what feels safe is often the first step toward stagnation.

In the early days of my company, Jotform, our marquee product was our form builder. The tedium of creating forms by hand was what drove me to start my own business, and it was a hit off the bat.

But even though I launched with a totally functional product, I never stopped improving the form builder. I rewrote it four times over the years, and it wasn’t until a decade after Jotform’s launch that I finally felt I’d found the optimal version.

Looking back, it would have been easy to say, “This works. Let’s move on.” But if I had stopped at the first or even second iteration, we never would have built the product that helped Jotform scale to serve millions of users. Each rewrite forced us to raise the bar, whether it was bringing in top-notch designers, adopting new frameworks or organizing teams differently. Those refinements became the foundation for our growth, and also helped us survive whenever brand-name competitors stepped into the form-building ring.

The reality is that “good enough” breeds complacency. Think of the once-dominant companies — BlackBerry, Blockbuster and Kodak, to name a few — that failed to innovate. If you’re not actively improving, your product risks becoming obsolete even as it still “works.”

Continuous improvement vs. perfectionism

To be clear, rejecting “good enough” doesn’t mean chasing perfection. That’s another trap — one that can paralyze progress instead of driving it forward. Perfectionism fixates on flaws, delays launches and makes it impossible to move quickly in a competitive market. Continuous improvement, on the other hand, is about steady, deliberate progress over time.

This process may sound fairly straightforward, but there are actual frameworks that leaders can use to guide them. Plan-Do-Check-Act, or PDCA, is one such tool. “Plan” entails identifying an opportunity and planning for change. “Do” happens when you implement the change on a small scale. “Check” is the process of evaluating the results. “Act” is when you standardize the change, or, if one stage didn’t work, begin the cycle again.

PCDA encourages organizations to make improvements iteratively, measure their impact and then adapt based on what they’ve learned. Research shows this mindset doesn’t just fine-tune operations; it actually builds to a long-term competitive advantage.

Related: Perfection Does Not Exist. Here’s How to Stop Wishing and Get Your Business Started.

Building a culture that rejects “good enough”

Rejecting “good enough” has to be more than just something you say you’ll do. It has to be embedded in the way your company functions at every level.

As a leader, it means encouraging your teams to experiment, so they feel safe testing ideas without fear of failure. It also means creating strong feedback loops: listening to customers, tracking performance and reflecting regularly to identify improvements. And when you do make improvements, celebrate your wins — even if they’re small. Too often, companies reward splashy launches but overlook the quiet power of iteration. By valuing refinements, you reinforce the idea that progress never stops just because something is merely fine.

Lasting success doesn’t come from settling for “good enough,” but from the drive to keep raising the bar. The entrepreneurs who endure are the ones who, like Rikyū, see every version not as an endpoint, but as the beginning of something even better.

By the time Sen Rikyū was born in 16th-century Japan, tea ceremonies had already been a fixture of cultural life for around 700 years. You could say that, as a practice, society had them pretty down pat.

Rikyū loved tea. He first began studying it as a young man and underwent the rigorous training required to eventually become a tea master. Typically, that’s where most people stop — tea mastery takes a deep understanding of its technical aspects, as well as its history, aesthetics and philosophy. For most, reaching that level would be enough.