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How Good is 99%?

We’ve all heard someone say something was “good enough.” Maybe it was a report with a few typos, a shipment that arrived mostly correct, or a system that worked most of the time. In business, we often strive for that seemingly impressive 99 percent accuracy rate. It sounds pretty good, right? Just one error in a hundred.

But let me share something that might surprise you.

What 99 percent really means:

When you dig into the numbers, 99 percent accuracy isn’t nearly as good as it sounds. Let’s look at what this standard would mean in your daily life and business:

• Your e-commerce store would ship 20 incorrect orders out of every 2,000 – wrong products, wrong addresses, or wrong quantities

• Your cloud services would be down for 7+ hours every month (that’s over 87 hours annually)

• If you process payments, you’d face errors on 1% of transactions – in 2024, businesses lost nearly $48 billion to payment-related fraud and errors ^[1]

• Your website would experience cart abandonment and checkout failures that cost you real revenue

Think about your own experience as a customer. How often have you received the wrong item? How frustrated were you when a website crashed during checkout? Each of these moments represents a failure in someone’s “99 percent” standard.

The real cost to your business

For entrepreneurs and small business leaders, these errors add up quickly. Recent data shows that warehouse error rates jumped 23% during peak seasons, and delivery delays affected roughly 11% of holiday shipments globally.^[2] When you’re building a business, these aren’t just statistics – they’re lost customers, damaged reputation, and eroded profit margins.

Consider what happens when your systems fail: A recent AWS outage showed that even brief downtime can cost businesses $14,000+ per minute.^[3] For small businesses depending on digital operations, a single hour of downtime can exceed $300,000 in lost productivity and revenue.^[4]

And here’s the thing – your customers have options. While you’re dealing with that 1% error rate, your competitors might be operating at much higher standards.

A different standard

There’s an international quality standard called Six Sigma that aims for less than four errors per million opportunities. To put that in perspective, 99 percent represents 10,000 errors per million. The companies achieving Six Sigma levels aren’t just statistically better – they’re building customer trust and loyalty that becomes a genuine competitive advantage.

You might be thinking, “That sounds expensive and complicated.” And you’re not wrong – achieving perfection in everything is neither realistic nor cost-effective. But here’s what I’ve learned: you don’t need to be perfect everywhere. You need to be exceptional where it matters most to your customers.

Three disciplines that make the difference

Rather than trying to fix everything at once, I’d encourage you to focus on the Scaling Up three disciplines of execution. These aren’t complex management theories – they’re practical frameworks that help you deliver consistent quality:

1. Clear Priorities Never have more than a handful of priorities at any given time. I’m talking about your top 5 – and especially your top 1 of 5. When everyone in your organization knows what matters most right now, you get natural alignment. People make better decisions because they understand what you’re trying to achieve.

Ask yourself: If you stopped three random employees today, could they tell you your company’s top priority? If not, that’s your starting point.

2. Meaningful Metrics You need a dashboard that tracks whether you’re actually achieving those priorities. Not vanity metrics that make you feel good, but real indicators that tell you if you’re winning or losing.

For your critical processes – order fulfillment, customer service, system uptime – what does “good” look like? What does “excellent” look like? You can’t improve what you don’t measure, but more importantly, you can’t focus your team without clear scorecards.

3. Consistent Rhythms This is where execution happens. Daily huddles. Weekly check-ins. Monthly reviews. Quarterly planning. These meeting rhythms create accountability and allow you to spot problems early, when they’re easier to fix.

I know meetings can feel like time-wasters, but structured rhythms with clear agendas drive faster, better decisions throughout your organization.

Here’s my take

You don’t have to accept errors as “just part of business.” Your customers certainly don’t accept them – they just find alternatives.

The question isn’t whether you can afford to improve from 99 percent to something better. The real question is: can you afford not to?

Start by identifying your most critical customer touch-points. Where do errors hurt the most? Where would improvement create the biggest impact? Then apply these three disciplines to drive measurable progress.

While others settle for 99 percent, you could be shooting for 99.9997 percent – at least in the areas that matter most.

What’s your top priority for the next 90 days?

Want to discuss how these execution disciplines could work in your business? Contact me to explore what’s possible.