Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences:
Our experience, expertise and established standards can help us recognize weaknesses, but they can also lead us to treat every departure from what we consider good practice as a problem requiring intervention. Before committing to improvement, we need to establish whether the identified weakness is materially affecting performance, limiting results or preventing the organization from achieving its objectives.
Well into Kill Jackie, the new eight-part thriller starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, and thoroughly enjoying myself, I was already placing it in the company of productions like Kill Bill, The Gentlemen and The Brothers Sun. That particular genre of stylish, outrageous, sometimes completely improbable entertainment appeals to me, and I was rather pleased to see Catherine Zeta-Jones carrying a production of this kind.
Curious to see what others were saying, I went looking for reviews, fully expecting to find glowing assessments. Instead, I stumbled upon a Forbes review by Rick Ellis, published on October 2, 2026, titled Kill Jackie Is a Thriller With Nothing to Get Excited About.
It was a scathing assessment. Ellis dismantled almost every aspect of the production, from its storytelling and character development to its action sequences and the performance of its leading actress. He found the series unconvincing, emotionally flat and ultimately boring. His conclusion was that the show had all the ingredients of a compelling thriller but had failed to turn them into something worth watching.
To be fair, I could follow much of his reasoning.
His criticisms were not necessarily without merit, and he made several observations that might well stand up to closer examination. But none of that changed my experience. I was enjoying the series. I wasn’t looking for a masterpiece of television or measuring the production against other thrillers. I was entertained, interested in what would happen next and happy to continue watching.
The review gave me another perspective on something I was experiencing, but it did not invalidate that experience.
The review raised an interesting question about how we can arrive at very different conclusions about the same thing, not because one of us is necessarily wrong, but because we are approaching it with different expectations, different measures of value and perhaps even different understandings of what it is supposed to deliver.
Whose Standards Are We Using?
When we evaluate something, we rarely approach it without expectations. We bring our experience, knowledge, preferences and understanding of what good performance should look like. Those standards help us recognize weaknesses, identify opportunities for improvement and make informed judgments. They are particularly valuable when we have developed expertise in a field. But the very standards that sharpen our judgment can also narrow what we are prepared to recognize as valuable.
A professional critic approaches a television series with an understanding of narrative structure, characterization, pacing, originality and production quality. An ordinary viewer may be looking for an engaging way to spend an evening. Both are interacting with the same production, but they are not necessarily evaluating it against the same requirements. The critic may identify shortcomings that the viewer barely notices, while the viewer may find enjoyment in elements the critic considers insufficient. Neither perspective automatically cancels the other.
This becomes particularly relevant when we move from personal preferences into decisions that affect other people.
We can become so convinced of what “good” should look like that we fail to establish what the people we are serving actually need, value or expect.
We identify deficiencies according to our own standards and begin developing solutions before determining whether those deficiencies are creating meaningful problems for anyone else.
The Difference Between a Weakness and a Problem
Something can have weaknesses without those weaknesses preventing it from fulfilling its purpose.
- A process may be less sophisticated than another available approach but remain reliable, understandable and effective for the people using it.
- A business may operate differently from accepted industry practices while continuing to satisfy its customers and achieve the outcomes its owners want.
- A product may lack features that experts consider essential while delivering precisely what its users value most.
This does not mean that weaknesses should be ignored or that satisfactory performance is a reason to resist improvement. It means we need to establish the relationship between an identified weakness and the outcomes that matter.
Not every imperfection creates a problem, and not every opportunity to improve something represents a worthwhile investment.
Consider how often organizations undertake improvement initiatives because something does not conform to an established model of best practice. A new system is introduced, a process is redesigned, a structure is reorganized or additional controls are implemented. The changes may be technically sound, but the people responsible for making them may not have established what problem they were trying to solve, how significant that problem was or whether the proposed improvements would produce enough value to justify their cost.
The result can be an organization that has become more sophisticated without necessarily becoming more effective.
When Expertise Becomes a Limitation
Expertise is essential to good judgment, but it carries a responsibility to remain curious about perspectives that do not align with our own. The more we know about a subject, the more readily we recognize what is missing, what could be improved and what does not meet the standards we have developed. That knowledge gives us an advantage, provided we do not allow it to become the only lens through which we interpret what is happening.
- A consultant may see inefficiencies in a business that its owner has deliberately chosen to tolerate because addressing them would require resources better invested elsewhere.
- A designer may identify limitations in a website that its visitors find perfectly easy to navigate.
- A leader may be dissatisfied with a team’s approach to completing a task even though the results consistently meet the required standard.
In each case, the observation may be accurate, but the conclusion that something needs to change requires further examination.
There is also the question of trade-offs.
Every improvement consumes something, whether money, time, attention, capacity or the willingness of people to adapt. An improvement that looks attractive in isolation may be less compelling when considered alongside everything else that requires attention. The question is not simply whether we can make something better. We also need to understand what we might gain, what we might sacrifice and whether the proposed change addresses something important enough to warrant the investment.
Better Does Not Exist Independently of Purpose
We frequently talk about improving performance, raising standards and pursuing excellence as though these objectives are self-explanatory. Yet better is always relative to something. Better for whom? Better at achieving what? Better under which conditions? Better at what cost?
Without answers to those questions, improvement can become an activity that justifies itself. We continue refining, adding, correcting and optimizing because we assume that movement toward a higher standard must represent progress. But progress requires a meaningful relationship between what we are changing and what we are trying to achieve.
This is particularly important when decisions are influenced by external expectations. Organizations may adopt practices because competitors are using them, because consultants recommend them or because those practices have become associated with successful businesses. These may all be legitimate reasons to investigate an approach, but they are not sufficient reasons to implement it. The relevance of any proposed solution depends on the circumstances, capabilities, priorities and intended outcomes of the organization considering it.
Sometimes the most valuable contribution an advisor can make is to identify what needs to change. At other times, it is to establish that something which appears imperfect is not the source of the difficulty being experienced. Both require sound judgment, and both depend on understanding the situation before prescribing a response.
Before We Decide What Needs Fixing…
We are often quick to identify what is wrong, especially when we have the knowledge and experience to recognize departures from what we consider good practice. However, identifying something that could be better is not the same as establishing that it needs fixing.
A useful diagnosis must go further.
It needs to examine whether the identified weakness is contributing to an undesirable outcome, whether addressing it would make a meaningful difference and whether there may be other factors that deserve greater attention. It must also allow for the possibility that the person experiencing the situation values something different from what the expert initially assumes.
None of this diminishes the importance of excellence. It gives excellence a purpose. High standards matter because of what they enable us to achieve, not simply because they represent an ideal against which everything else can be judged.
As for Kill Jackie, Rick Ellis may have made a perfectly reasonable case for why the series falls short of what he considers a compelling thriller. I can appreciate his analysis without adopting his conclusion as my own. The series entertained me, and that was what I wanted from it.
Perhaps there is something useful in recognizing that two people can assess the same thing differently because they are asking different questions of it. Before deciding that one assessment is right and the other is wrong, we might first consider what each person is trying to establish. And before we commit ourselves to improving something, we would do well to establish whether the problem we believe we have identified is actually the problem that needs our attention.
Strategic Reflection Prompt
Where might you be treating something as a problem because it falls short of your expectations or established standards, without first determining whether it is actually compromising performance, limiting results or preventing the organization from achieving its objectives?
About Giselle
Some of the most costly decisions begin with a wrong read of the situation.
I’m Giselle Hudson, The Pre-Fixer™. I am asked to intervene when something important needs to be better understood before a consequential decision is made.
As The Pre-Fixer™, I act as a strategic thinking partner, working with leaders to examine what they are seeing, separate what they know from what they may be assuming, consider what else might explain the situation, and surface what may not yet be visible.
I don’t fix; I pre-fix. My work happens before the solution is chosen, helping leaders build the understanding from which better decisions can be made.
Through my daily Strategic Alignment Journal, I explore leadership, decision-making, business and the patterns that shape organizations, following the questions and observations that help us understand situations more clearly before deciding how to respond.
What are you trying to make sense of right now?
