B for Perfection

In February, the Finnish media picked up a social media conversation. Cheyenne Järvinen, an social media influencer had rented out an Airbnb flat in Helsinki and given it four out of five stars. The owner, Maja Hynynen had contacted the influencer to ask what could be improved for a five-star rating, and even asked her to change her review directly to five stars. The influencer wrote about it in her social media, and a conversation was born. The owner also came forward and said that while she doesn’t have access to data for proof, it is anecdotally and generally acknowledged that apartments with an average rating of below 4.3 (out of 5) are already badly hit, due to a combination of the apartments not showing up high enough in the listings (especially when sorted by ratings), and of people generally expecting to find destinations with a rating higher than that.

Hynynen notes in her comments to the newspaper whose story I linked above that Finnish people tend to give five-star ratings only when they deem the destination exceptional. This is something I have heard in other businesses, too, which is why this story caught my eye (although I will say that the pink hues of Hynynen’s Airbnb apartment swiftly places rose-coloured glasses on me. Pink goes with everything…). What is perfection? And does getting the highest mark require it?

Only God Can Score 100%

In secondary school (junior high), there was a student in my class who had spent some years in France. He told that once he had gotten every single question right in an exam, yet he still only score 18/20. When he asked why, his teacher had said “19 points belong to the teacher, and 20 to God.” Yikes. Is perfection unattainable for us mere mortals?

A friend told me that he was asking for feedback after an event he put together. One person gave 3/5 stars and some improvement suggestions, too. This on its own would probably had been fine, assuming the improvement suggestions were realistic and appropriate and not “you should have served champagne and caviar, no matter your budget,” but the person commented to my friend: “I can’t give you five stars! Otherwise, you won’t have anything to improve upon.” Let’s just say that my friend did not find that a valuable piece of advice.

Solid performers get Bs

On social media, I see many individuals either acting out a scene from their performance reviews or perhaps showing a genuine recording of them, I can never tell. Some are asked by their manager why they no longer exceed expectations and go the extra mile, unlike the previous year. The employees in these situations invariably answer with a slight smile: “Last year, I was hitting all of my targets and exceeding them. I got great performance reviews and more tasks, but not a dime more for my efforts. So if going the extra mile here doesn’t result in any upward change in my compensation, I see no reason to do anything but what I am currently paid for.” The managers in these clips are usually quiet after that.

I personally don’t subscribe to that attitude but I understand people who do. In my case, my primary goal for the moment is to learn and grow, and since it’s my personal objective and not one given to me by my employer, don’t see why they should pay me extra for that. A different topic entirely is whether organizations should support their staff’s learning and development overall and nurture talent – this I believe in but will not delve into here. But I suppose in the examples I refer to, the primary goal of these individuals is to get a pay rise and/or a promotion, in which case I, too, would be dismayed if one wasn’t forthcoming and I then got questioned about my dwindling motivation.

But isn’t a steady, solid performer a five-star performer? If you reach your goals time after time, you do so in a sustainable manner, without causing harm to your colleagues and organization, isn’t that a perfect performance? Why do we think that to get full points, there needs to be a little something extra? I am now discussing both human performance and service/product reviews, but I think the same way of thinking may apply.

I wonder if Finns think that giving five stars to a service or product is tantamount to saying it’s perfect, and that’s why we’re hesitant to give them. Apparently we’re all solids fours, Bs, and to get that elusive fifth star we should really POP, add a touch of luxury (although how you add luxury to luxury is a good question).

What’s your rationale when giving a rating? Are five stars for perfection, or for a good experience? Leave a comment below!