Improvement

Contrary to the claims of your highly paid corporate leadership consultant, continuous improvement is simply not possible.

Everything arises and passes away as the Buddha reminds us; things might get better for a while, but eventually, they’re going to go downhill, no doubt about it.

Of course, we can wonder what we mean by “better”.  More efficient?  More productive?  More profitable?

They all have inherent downsides like people losing their jobs or traditional skills being abandoned or the rich getting richer while you know who gets poorer, so maybe they’re not really better at all, in which case not only is continuous improvement called into question, the very notion of improvement at all becomes suspect.

Does nature, for instance, ever really improve?  If a tree grows a little bigger every year, is it getting better?  Is the sheer cliff face superior after ten thousand years of erosion?  Surely a case can be made that the ant colony under my house which seems to continually expand is actually worse—at least when it comes to little lines of the critters around my sugar bowl.

The obsession with continuous improvement seems to be a product of a misguided conception of what life is really all about.  Sure, we want to strive to be kinder, more compassionate, more accomplished human beings and to make the world a better place.  

But sometimes, the best way to do so is to stop trying to do so.  At some point, the most significant improvement we can make is to no longer attempt to improve.  Rather, we recognize that radical acceptance is what we’re after.

Good enough is good enough after all.

I can hear the heads of highly paid corporate leadership consultants and CEOs and college presidents exploding here.  “How are you going to compete in today’s global marketplace, blah-blah, if you’re just willing to settle?”

But here’s the thing: you really don’t have to compete. 

And that’s the most continuous improvement of all.