In their current advertising campaign, the bottlers of Arrowhead water proclaim that "Better has no finish line."  A similar sentiment is revealed in the slogan, Citius, Altius, Fortius (swifter, higher, stronger), Latin words ending in "ius" that were joined by Pierre de Coubertin in 1894.   Well before the business era of formal continuous improvement efforts that marked the 1980s and continue today, de Couberton led the rebirth of the modern Olympics with a focus on never-ending improvement.  Yet, many organizations today maintain a steadfast commitment to eliminate variation and non-value added activities, all the while in pursuit of a quality goal of zero defects and a productivity goal of zero waste, seen together as the attainment of perfection.  If these goals are finish lines, might they represent the end of better? That is, unless we can envision negative defects and negative waste.

If not, "Better has no finish line" has been trumped by "Better stops at zero defects, zero waste, or perfection."  Might it be possible that finish lines, such as the achievement of these goals, stem from how individuals within organizations think about their efforts as separate parts and tasks and not how they connect with each other? To perceive improvement as continuous requires thinking past the illusion of separate parts, tasks, actions, elements.  Instead, engaged and inspired leaders perceive the inherent variation in these elements and how they relate to each other.  Society advances when this happens, as when the sound barrier in flight was broken and running a 4-minute mile was surpassed.  Leaders, such as Retired Brigadier General Chuck Yeager and Sir Roger Bannister, think beyond such barriers by perceiving them as mental, conditioned by how we think and prioritize our efforts, not physical limits.  In doing so, improvement efforts could be advanced by acknowledging self-imposed restrictions on our thinking; specifically, thinking in terms of good parts and on-budget tasks, rather than in terms of the interactions between parts, actions, and elements, not these efforts taken separately.  Call it team work and the end of zero defects, zero waste, and perfection as finish lines.