The 97 Percent Rule: Why Excellence Happens in Stages, Not Leaps

I used to think getting a task to excellence was a single handoff — explain it once, hope for the best, and if it didn’t land, chalk it up to poor onboarding. I built my whole approach to delegation on that assumption for years. I was wrong. Excellence happens in stages, not leaps, and skipping a stage is the fastest way for a task to never actually arrive there. I’m learning this now, in real time, as I hand more and more of my own work to my team.

C.H.E.W. with Me

New here? What is CHEW? — a 30-second practice that grows into a day woven with God’s love.

C: Clarity — I Don’t Always Know How to Do the Task Either

Sometimes, even though I run the company, I have no idea how to do a specific task well. So I give the person whatever insight I do have, let them build the process, and we refine it together — testing it, finding what we missed, improving it again.

What I’ve noticed is a pattern. The first pass usually lands around 80 to 85 percent. The next refinement gets it to about 92. The one after that reaches the A-level range — 97 to 100, the way school used to grade it. Clients are thrilled at 97. And from there, the work shifts into a different mode entirely.

H: Hear — Brighter and Brighter Until Full Day

“But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day.” (Proverbs 4:18)

This isn’t a verse promising instant maturity. It’s a Father describing growth the way growth actually happens — not a switch flipped from dark to light, but a dawn that keeps getting brighter until it’s full day. The Hebrew word behind “light of dawn” is nogah — a glow that builds rather than bursts. The picture is gradual, not sudden. Stay with what’s said: brighter and brighter, not bright all at once.

Paul describes the same trajectory in different language: believers “are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). One degree to another — not one leap to arrival. Scripture describes a Christian’s growth in character, and I’d argue in skill and craft too, as something that compounds rather than something that completes in a single decisive moment. The stages aren’t a failure to arrive faster. They’re how light — and how people — were designed to grow.

E: Exchange — Staying in Growth Mode Without the Old Urgency

Claire and I are at that stage now with a project that’s moved past 80 percent into the 92 percent range, and we’re building it toward 97. She’s doing great — and I’m feeling more and more relieved that I don’t have to think about this project much at all. That relief has an edge to it, if I’m honest.

I have Achiever in my top five CliftonStrengths — a natural drive to finish and produce — and I grew up the son of two surgeons who pushed me to work hard, in a part of a city that trains you to be a go-getter whether you like it or not. In the SALVES framework I use to name what drives the heart, my top driver is Significance — the longing for my life to count in a way that lasts — and my second is Love, the longing to be loved for who I am, not just useful. For years I sacrificed self-care to chase both. Those days are over, but the discomfort of not being as busy hasn’t fully left. Letting go still costs something every time, even when it’s the right thing to do.

The good news is that growth mode doesn’t end at 97 percent. It just changes shape. There’s always a way to improve — even 0.1 percent — and finding it is where the fun actually lives, whether a project fell short or a client was pleased enough to refer three more people to us. The question stops being “did we hit the number” and becomes “how do we improve without losing what we already have.”

Because understanding God’s love is like the dawn that grows brighter and brighter until full day, how does that change the way you measure your team’s progress — or your own — this week?

W: Walk — Sort Your Team’s Projects by Stage

Look at every task your team is handling right now. Sort them honestly: which are still at 80–85, which are at 92, which have genuinely reached 97. For the ones stuck below 97, ask the person doing the work to bring you one growth-mindset suggestion for the next stage — before you offer your own. For the ones already at 97, practice the harder discipline: step back, and let the discomfort of being less needed be evidence the work is finished, not a problem to solve.

Closing question: Which of your team’s projects have you been unwilling to admit have already reached 97 percent without you?