The version of this I see in career coaching is people staying in jobs that are defensible. No one can argue with the title, the salary, the stability. And yet something has been wrong for two years. The question "this is defensible, but is it good?" applies to a lot more than work quality.
EditMe stayed defensible for years - steady $5-a-month customers, a PC Magazine award, just enough to keep the lights on. It never once forced the harder question: whether the wiki-in-a-box category was worth building in at all.
This is so true! I see firsthand that people are busy doing things but making no progress. And a lot of the time, people refuse to admit their actions don’t contribute. I love your clear vision of seeing things and having a focus sights on what matters most.
Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us. Really really appreciated!
I love the reductive reasoning “is the work useful” this is how individuals create more mass inside of organizations, but it is so hard for people to say: “That thing is not valuable”. Great article
This is difficult because it requires judgment and that is subjective. People find comfort in numbers and metrics because that’s defensible. Nobody gets fired for “good” (but meaningless) metrics but if you make a judgement call and it doesn’t work out there’s always the fear of blowback.
I think the phrase "It's defensible. But is it good?" goes both ways in organisations.
I work mostly with deep subject matter experts. Their organisations tell them that their expertise and judgment are highly valued. But if that expert's judgment conflicts with the process, the metric, or the perspective of someone higher in the hierarchy, then the expertise is sent out of the room.
Suddenly they need more data, another review, or told to trust the process. Due to their experience and knowledge, experts see patterns and exceptions that are invisible to everyone else and fall between the cracks of the metrics.
Of course expert judgment can be wrong. “Trust me, I'm the expert” isn't a particularly compelling decision process either.
But leaders, like a COO, sometimes create processes to improve decision quality and then inadvertently use those same processes to constrain the insight of the people best equipped to recognise when something isn't working, and it's NOT defensible.
Maybe the question isn't only “This is defensible. But is it good?”
For decision makers, maybe another question is: who are we prepared to trust when they say "It's not good, and it's not defensible".
Part of what makes this stick is that "defensible" and "good" answer different questions — defensible looks backward to a challenge that might come ("can I justify this?"), good looks forward to the outcome. That's maybe why the tell for defensible-but-not-good work is often extra paperwork: the trail is the point. Have you seen "but is it good?" survive in blame-heavy cultures, where defensibility isn't a lazy habit but rational armor?
The version of this I see in career coaching is people staying in jobs that are defensible. No one can argue with the title, the salary, the stability. And yet something has been wrong for two years. The question "this is defensible, but is it good?" applies to a lot more than work quality.
EditMe stayed defensible for years - steady $5-a-month customers, a PC Magazine award, just enough to keep the lights on. It never once forced the harder question: whether the wiki-in-a-box category was worth building in at all.
the "this is defensible, but is it good?" question is one I want in more rooms. so much work clears every stated requirement and still moves nothing!
This is so true! I see firsthand that people are busy doing things but making no progress. And a lot of the time, people refuse to admit their actions don’t contribute. I love your clear vision of seeing things and having a focus sights on what matters most.
Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us. Really really appreciated!
I love the reductive reasoning “is the work useful” this is how individuals create more mass inside of organizations, but it is so hard for people to say: “That thing is not valuable”. Great article
This is difficult because it requires judgment and that is subjective. People find comfort in numbers and metrics because that’s defensible. Nobody gets fired for “good” (but meaningless) metrics but if you make a judgement call and it doesn’t work out there’s always the fear of blowback.
I think the phrase "It's defensible. But is it good?" goes both ways in organisations.
I work mostly with deep subject matter experts. Their organisations tell them that their expertise and judgment are highly valued. But if that expert's judgment conflicts with the process, the metric, or the perspective of someone higher in the hierarchy, then the expertise is sent out of the room.
Suddenly they need more data, another review, or told to trust the process. Due to their experience and knowledge, experts see patterns and exceptions that are invisible to everyone else and fall between the cracks of the metrics.
Of course expert judgment can be wrong. “Trust me, I'm the expert” isn't a particularly compelling decision process either.
But leaders, like a COO, sometimes create processes to improve decision quality and then inadvertently use those same processes to constrain the insight of the people best equipped to recognise when something isn't working, and it's NOT defensible.
Maybe the question isn't only “This is defensible. But is it good?”
For decision makers, maybe another question is: who are we prepared to trust when they say "It's not good, and it's not defensible".
Part of what makes this stick is that "defensible" and "good" answer different questions — defensible looks backward to a challenge that might come ("can I justify this?"), good looks forward to the outcome. That's maybe why the tell for defensible-but-not-good work is often extra paperwork: the trail is the point. Have you seen "but is it good?" survive in blame-heavy cultures, where defensibility isn't a lazy habit but rational armor?