At this point, it's almost as big of a cliche as the cliche it's making fun of: Whenever someone says, "I want everyone to give 110%!" someone else responds with, "You can't give more than 100%. It's the maximum amount possible." Cue people smirking at the stupid guy who delivered such a tired and lame motivational gimmick, or at least that must be what people do because jokes about mathematical fallacies rarely bring in the real yuks.
Except that it is entirely possible to give 110%. If I work at a call center, and the goal for the week is to take seventy calls a day, and I take seventy-seven, I have given 110% of that goal. If I sell vacuum cleaners, and my average sales-per-week is 200 vacuum cleaners, and this week I sell 220, I have given 110% of my usual effort. If I am a running back, and my personal best is a 100-yard rushing game, and I have a 110-yard rushing game, I will have given--guess what? That's right, 110% of my personal best.
Numbers greater than 100% exist. They are used routinely in mathematics and everyday life. When you tell someone "You can't give more than 100%," all you are really telling them is, "I'm not only a smug and arrogant cynic, I'm also bad at math, too!" Which isn't exactly the message you want to be sending. (I hope.)
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9 comments:
True...but I've seen production reports indicating over 100% efficiency. Based on my thermodynamics classes, that means product spontaneously builds itself when no one is on the manufacturing floor. What it comes down to is, sadly, many people are bad at math.
Or it means that you have an established idea for how much time a given unit of product requires to be built that is then exceeded. It's still possible.
But "I want you to go out there and give 110%!" doesn't mean "I wish for you to outperform our metric standard by a tenth." It does, actually, request that you give 10% more than you have. So it's still wrong.
That said, if you're in a group where you not only have someone who still tries to fire people up with the 110% thing, but you've also got the kind of smartass who feels the need to correct that other guy, I think it's time to gracefully bow out of whatever you're engaged in. You're not on the path to success with that crew.
If you've surpassed the "established idea" you may have more than 100% of quota, projections, or output, bu tnot efficiency (again in the thermodynamic sense). Just being extra engineeringly geeky.
Further pedantry: in Standard English, we don't have the construction "as big of a cliche". We simply have "as big a cliche" which, I'm sure you'll agree, is less ungainly. This seems to be a modern Americanism.
What I love is how his rant on how obnoxious he finds pedantry has become a field day for THE EXACT pedantry he's kvetching about. Good show. Bravo.
We also have irony.
Actually... beating a goal or a production number is not the same as giving more... giving more than 100% means giving more that you are capable of... and if you give more than you are capable of then you have more to give... thus, have a new 100% marker to hit... you cannot give more than 100%...
"giving more than 100% means giving more that you are capable of"
Actually, the meaning of the original phrase was "giving more than you have been giving SO FAR" or "giving more than you had THOUGHT you were capable of".
The gist of the saying is an encouragement to reach within oneself and have the courage to discover that one has underestimated how much one is actually capable of. (Or to accept that one has chosen to give less than one could.)
Thus, if I honestly believe I can lift only 100 lbs, but I'm really capable of lifting 120 lbs and simply sabotage my lifting capacity with my lack of confidence, reaching deep within myself and lifting 110 lbs instead of my alleged maximum of 100 lbs is indeed "giving 110%".
In the same way, if I earn $200 a week and contribute $100 a week to my savings account, but one day I realize that I can really afford to contribute $110 a week with hardship and I deem the hardship worth it to increase my contribution to my savings, then I have just found a way to "give 110%" of what I had been giving beforehand.
The phrase has nothing do with mathematical parameters and everything to do with expectations -- and how one can often exceed one's expectations with enough effort and faith in oneself.
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