Progress, Not Perfection

Tuesday

Jan122010

Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at 6:57AM

I recently had the opportunity to sit in on an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Limited Disclosure: Who I was in the meeting for is private, hence the ‘anonymous,’ but I will share that I am not in recovery, just an interested, supportive third party.

One lesson from the meeting really stuck in my mind. It’s a simple concept.

“Progress, Not Perfection”

Put simply, the idea is that a recovering alcoholic is going to falter on the road to sobriety. What AA encourages is continual effort toward becoming sober for life, because as they also acknowledge being an alcoholic is something you are not something you "have." The concept encourages continual improvement, instead of a light-switch, where one turns off their desire for alcohol and never turns it back on.

I left the meeting and that simple phrase kept turning around and around. I wonder if the green movement in total, and the green building movement specifically, could use a dose of this thinking. I often read on professional boards and blogs about the dilemma of asking clients to take sustainability measures when they are not perfect solutions.

“How can we ask them to switch to fluorescent when there is Mercury?”
“How can we ask them to switch to solar, when the waste stream isn’t managed?”
“How can we recommend LEED accreditation when, the NY Times posts articles doubting LEED’s effectiveness?”

It’s not that each of these questions don’t have merit, they do. Solving these kinds of problems through the development of best practices is something Build2Sustain is committed to. That said, the perfect cannot continually be enemy of the good. Apply the “progress, not perfection” mantra and we’ll see forward movement when it comes to increasing efficiency and therefore the sustainability of the built environment.

Does that make a perfect a building stock? No, of course not. To create one would be the life’s work of every design/build professional, but it’s a start.

Progress, Not Perfection.

Let’s get to work.

James Bedell |

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Reader Comments (10)

James,

Excellent post...in my view sustainability is a journey for the greater good...the pursuit of perfection knowing the there is no end. Your post does a great service in that it highlights a nuance - that one can't be "sustainable"...but one can definitely pursue "sustainable ways".

Nice work.

Thanks,

Mike

January 12, 2010 |

Mike Hines (@eXapath)

A great post. Another tenet of AA is sharing your experience with others. I believe this can also be applied to green building and sustainability. Green building is new, and to date, there are no experts in the field. Sustainability and the green movement themselves are works in progress. It is the sharing of articles such as yours that everyone becomes a little more enlightened and we all progress forward.

Thank you.

Vickie
(a close friend of an AA member also)

January 12, 2010 |

Vickie Lane

Thanks, James.

I have to wonder how "perfection" came to be understood as a destination rather than a direction. By their very nature, both sobriety and sustainability require perfection in purpose only. I often remind my clients that perfection is found in their commitment to improve and transparency in sharing their progress. Mistakes will be made, we will learn from them, and we will all be better off for having shared our "imperfections" in pursuit of something better.

January 12, 2010 |

Melanie

While I agree with the sentiment, I think that the definition of "progress" is sometimes relative - especially when it comes to green building codes and other related regulations.

For example, today California is potentially going to adopt a state green building code which may include a tiered state-run green building rating system (CalGreen) with unenforceable metrics and no third-party verification. Some say that "it's better than nothing" while most major environmental organizations, such as the USGBC, Sierra Club, NRDC, Build It Green, and others, know that adopting something so confusing and difficult to enforce will only cause market confusion.

While on the surface it seems like a state green building rating system is "progress," it's really a step backward for the movement. Credibility is key.

January 12, 2010 |

Elaine (@elaineishere)

Elaine-

I completely take your point on credibility. I think the point of the post is that we didn't get to an unsustainable building stock over night. It happens through years of conscious disregard. What bothers me is when a sustainable measure or set of measures is proposed. Say switching to fluorescent ambient lighting over halogen track as a way to reduce power consumption. People bring up mercury in the fluorescent lamp and say this is a reason not tonier the source. While I wish fluorescent lamps had no mercury I can't change that and in many ways they are superior light sources to their halogen counterparts. Perfect, no. Progress, yes.

Artificial road blocks because solutions aren't "perfect" create a false barrier to more sustainable building stock.

January 15, 2010 |

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