To ship or not to ship?
Imagine that you work on a new product. An ancient mind virus “I am what I do” – (Me, is, my product) – makes you to strive for good quality and design. Sounds like a fine idea, right? The problem is that it links your product to your identity. You cannot ship something inferior at the threat of feeling diminished, defective, unworthy of your place in the society.
So, what’s the problem? Just do a superb job and be happy, right? Alas, it’s not always possible. You are allowed to have too few people, too small salary fund to hire the right people, too few resources to do the job, and too little time. In fact, from a business perspective it may make a lot of sense. But not from the perspective of your mind virus that forces you to strive for doing a better job.
Now we have two mind viruses:
(1) “Do a superb product” anchored in your personality and identity (pretty much a survival anchor) and carried in society on reciprocal basis starting from your parents telling you – no, not good grades yet – to eat your breakfast porridge until the plate is clean.
(2) “Finish the product on time on budget” anchored in your job security, enforced by upper management and carried by the need to enforce the same imperative in the whole group.
Now the time comes and the product is not ready. First, the deadline virus strikes, because there is no way you can really ship what you’ve got, and there is no way to fix it in time either. If this is a car, it still misses the wheels; if it is a software product, it has problems installing, not to mention doing something useful; if it is a plane, let’s not even go into it… But slipping the deadline is deadly, nobody wants that. So, you get the quality mind virus and talk to your boss, to your reports, and finally higher powers agree to move the deadline. After all, they have the same mind viruses and they have similar pressures that you do, if not from the upper management, then from their peers.
Let’s see what happened. You slipped. You missed the deadline. Everybody knows that. Everybody does not speak about it. Everybody speaks about “the right decision”, “importance of good quality”, and “interests of a customer”. Mentioning that you slipped becomes socially improper behavior, like eating with hands or sneezing in public.
Then the reality and market forces press and you have to ship something finally. You still don’t have the quality required by your personality mind virus. You cannot abandon the virus, so you have to convince yourself (and everybody around) that you are shipping something of a good quality; something that does not harm your identity; something that deserves your status in the society. At the same time, you have to ship the damn thing, no matter what its current condition is. If you don’t, there may be no company to work for and no product to ship whatsoever. Or, maybe, simply no job at the company where you work on the product. Now comes the time of the “quality” game.
Suddenly, you don’t want zero defects, you just want zero defects that you know of. Actually, quite a reasonable idea except that you don’t want to know what you test team found. Then it becomes zero defects except those that you reviewed and decided that you can live with them. Guess what? You quickly find more and more defects that you are willing to live with. But, if you decide to fix something, that absolutely must be fixed! Your integrity would not stand for anything less. Of course, if another review will not reveal that you can live with it. And now the day comes. You are shipping the product. You are proud of its quality. After all, you fixed all the defects that “must” be fixed, right? And you are proud of delivering on time. Yeah, there were some reviews of schedule, it always happens, but you delivered right on the final schedule! Right? Of course, right. Two little mind viruses in your head would not settle for anything less. And neither would you. 
The only little problem is that you did not ship on schedule and you left a lot of problems inside the product. Fortunately for you, everybody around (management, peers, your team) share the same mind viruses and wholeheartedly agree with you. They would not settle for anything less either! Well, almost everybody. Except those dissidents, that you got rid of in the process.
Sounds familiar?