On Tolerance

In engineering, tolerance doesn’t mean machined exactly to spec. It’s the acceptable range of deviation. A bolt can be 9.98mm or 10.02mm and still work. Tolerance is the width of that band.

And that band is wide on purpose. Tighter tolerances cost more time and material. Zero tolerance is a fantasy. Nothing gets built that way.

In culture, we use tolerance in a similar way. We know we can’t be the same, so we make room for the differences between us.

But when culture becomes so reactive—demanding answers first before explanations—we narrow the band to the point where there’s no tolerance left.

There’s an opportunity here to redefine tolerance—closer to the engineering meaning than the loose cultural one. Not as permission, but as the width that lets anything work at all. Wide on purpose. Wide because perfection isn’t a spec, and pretending otherwise is what breaks what we’re trying to build.

Or we get exactly what zero tolerance allows: bowling alone.