Don’t settle for fine

I have recently been obsessed with the following phrase: “Just because something isn’t wrong doesn’t mean it’s wise.” We are surrounded by a culture that pushes us into that moral grey area in order to get us to consume. It seems fine to scroll one more time, to watch one more video. Before you know it, three hours have gone by. A more potent example is fluff in essays. It is easy to shove essays full of fluff just to inflate the word count to the professor’s limit. In the long run, however, this fluff may end up lowering your grade or even causing you to fail.

The alternative? Making wise choices. Wise choices are often tough, made even more so by the fact that the opposing choice is very rarely a bad option. It’s true that a little fluff will let you complete your essay and move on to more important things. It’s true that one more video won’t hurt. But the wise decision is often realizing that you are at the top of a hill, and each “Fine” choice you make gathers momentum down that hill. The longer you make unwise decisions, the harder it will be to get out from under their weight.

The good news is wise decisions gather momentum too. Unlike unwise choices, which are often caused by companies exploiting pre-programmed human behaviors, it can take months or even years for wise choices to accumulate into ongoing habits. Our bodies naturally resist doing hard things. But once you have wise habits, it’s very hard to shake them.

What does this have to do with business? Often times in business we easily settle on fine. Businesses have fine customer relations, fine product quality, and fine employee care. But God did not call us to merely do fine. He called us to be the salt and the light of the earth, to stand out and be exemplary. That is what redemptive business is all about.

So the next time you make a decision, any decision, don’t ask if it is wrong, because all wrong choices are unwise. But by asking if it is unwise, we get rid of both the wrong choices and the simply “Fine” Choices. We can be truly exemplary.