“Good enough for now, and safe enough to try”

Good enough for now, and safe enough to try

Yesterday, Gemma gave the SuperHi community a great talk on her work with Common Knowledge, a not-for-profit worker cooperative of technologists, designers, researchers and facilitators. She mentioned sociocracy, a governance framework that Common Knowledge works with to keep running smoothly.

When faced with a decision that requires consensus, the group evaluates whether or not the proposal is “good enough for now and safe enough to try”.

This was a bit of a lightbulb moment for me. There are so many groups that I have been a part of that would have been liberated by this approach.

But not even that, my own brain would be freed up a bit by this approach. I sometimes get hung up on figuring out the best solution to something, when figuring out a good solution to something might cause significantly less stress and quicker results.

I suppose when you apply it to your own decisions, it’s similar to “perfect is the enemy of good”. But that’s more vague. I like that this phrase is more direct, something you can actually apply to the decision making process.