Is 'Good' Enough? Video

Rating ***** (4 out of 5)

Initial Thoughts
The Is 'Good' Enough? video is a motivational meeting opener that tackles the concept of mediocrity head on by looking at what could happen if we were ok with setting the standard of excellence at 99.9%. I wrote a lot of it (and did just about all the research), so I have a bit of a bias, but even still I think it turned out really well and I'm really proud of it.

The Pros
The images are stunning! I got to watch the director play with them and bring new ones in and he did a really great job matching the feeling of the show with the graphics and photos on screen.

The music is memorizing. It blends into the background pretty well and just give a very steady feel to the film. It's serious without taking itself TOO seriously.

The hypothetical statistics are balanced very well between comic and tragic.

And finally, I think it's great that this meeting opener is only 3 minutes long. We could have filmed a lot more and made this into a 15 minute training film, but I think the meat of the learning is proved better with these hypothetical statistics than they would be with a long drawn out show.

The Cons
I really like the hypothetical stats, but they can be confusing because none of them are the actual statistics on how often these things actually happen. I simply extrapolated out from the total number.

For instance, if there's x number of births in the Unites States each year.
0.001 times x number of births = the amount of babies that COULD be swapped at birth if 99.9% were good enough...

Another con is that we decided to go with a rather monotone version of the voice-over. It doesn't sound bad, but if you listen to it over and over again she begins to sound a lot like the HAL computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey...

Also, there's a very narrow focus for this video. There's a lot of industries where quality at this level isn't even really an issue. So, anyone writing marketing copy or training a class or some other soft skills job won't really find this very appealing.

Who Would Want It
Anyone who wants a well produced conversation starter on quality and excellence.

The Bottom Line
This video is a little narrow in its focus. There's a lot of industries where 99.9% really IS good enough and that audience probably won't relate to the issues in this video which tend to focus on some extreme scenarios where lives are on the line. But for industries where a small mistake can mean terrible consequences, this is a very good video to demonstrate why quality and excellence are so important.

Check it out here: Is 'Good' Enough? Video