Does the pursuit of excellence cause you to neglect other important areas of life? Does it cause you to be short-tempered, rude, or cruel to other people? In other words, does it damage your relationships or damage your mental and physical wellbeing?
In an organizational context, does the pursuit of the inherent excellence of a product end up hindering the organization's overall mission?
If the answer is yes to any of the above, then at that point I believe the perfect has become the enemy of the good.
Of course, some people may use the above principles (perhaps subconsciously) as an excuse for laziness. Hopefully they have wise people around them to point that out if so. And that they themselves are wise enough to accept such feedback.
That's good logic. I recall when we used to resurface and polish marble floors. It's a tedious process that doesn't show much result until the very end and at which point with some much time invested you can either review be content with the finished product or drive yourself crazy agonizing over have the light reflects from every single tile.
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