---
id: "quote-benchmark-not-perfection"
type: "quote"
source_timestamps: ["§ Value-creation opportunities exist now."]
tags: ["adoption", "efficiency"]
related: ["claim-waiting-is-dangerous", "contrarian-focus-on-usefulness-not-intelligence"]
speakers: ["Bharat N. Anand", "Andy Wu"]
quote: "The benchmark shouldn't be perfection; it should be relative efficiency compared with your current ways of working."
source_url: "https://hbr.org/2025/11/the-gen-ai-playbook-for-organizations"
source_title: "The Gen AI Playbook for Organizations"
sources: ["agentic"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-agentic"
originDay: 6
articleStem: "hbr-cl-87-genai-playbook-orgs"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2025/11/the-gen-ai-playbook-for-organizations"
sourceTitle: "The Gen AI Playbook for Organizations"
---
# The benchmark shouldn't be perfection

> "The benchmark shouldn't be perfection; it should be relative efficiency compared with your current ways of working."
> — [[entity-bharat-n-anand|Bharat N. Anand]] & [[entity-andy-wu|Andy Wu]]

**Context.** Holding off on gen AI because the output isn't perfect misunderstands the opportunity. Gen AI can already deliver meaningful improvements and efficiencies across many areas of a business. This quote is the rhetorical core of [[claim-waiting-is-dangerous|the claim that waiting for flawless AI is a strategic mistake]] and of the [[contrarian-focus-on-usefulness-not-intelligence|contrarian shift from intelligence-trajectory to usefulness-today]].