Plan owners deflect a specific, valid critique by casting the critic as someone demanding perfection, so known flaws ship and the critic looks like an obstacle to progress.
An example
Ten days before an aerospace parts supplier shipped first articles of a new bracket to its largest customer, a junior quality engineer flagged that the inspection plan sampled one part in fifty where the customer specification called for one in ten on a critical bore. In the program review, the program manager said the team could not chase perfection with a delivery date on the board. The engineer's point went into the minutes as a request for additional inspection rigor. Nobody restated the number. Senior attendees nodded and moved to the next item. The shipment went out on time. Three weeks later the customer rejected eleven brackets for bore diameter, and the supplier paid for expedited replacements and a corrective action plan.
Why it works
Shipping with known defects becomes easier, since the plan owner is now defending pragmatism instead of a flawed plan. The fix looks worse because it has been relabeled as an unrealistic demand, which strips its value without any argument about its substance. Pausing to make it is costlier, because anyone who agrees with the critic is cast as an enemy of progress. The deflection costs one sentence, while the critic pays in the labor of restating and the social price of insisting. It works under real deadline pressure, against junior or peripheral critics, in rooms of busy seniors, and with plans adequate enough on the surface to pass as good enough.
The thinking behind it
Herbert A. Simon Herbert Simon's A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice (1955) argues that decision-makers with limited time and information search until they find an option that meets an aspiration level, which Simon called satisficing. A busy room under deadline pressure is primed to accept good enough, and calling a specific critique perfectionism invites the room to satisfice. Restating the fix as a bounded cost in days asks the room whether the plan really meets the bar.
Daniel Kahneman Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011) describes two modes of thought: fast, automatic System 1, and slow, effortful System 2, which engages only when something demands effort. Under time pressure people accept the intuitive answer. A one-word label such as perfectionism is easy for System 1 to accept; a specific number on a critical dimension makes System 2 engage, which is why the concrete restatement works.
Warning signs
The critique is restated as a wish for perfection and never appears in the critic's own specific words. The minutes record a general request for rigor in place of the number or the fix. Deadline pressure is visible and cited. The critic is junior or peripheral. Over time, fewer people raise specific objections in that forum.
How to defend yourself
Restate the objection in concrete terms and put a price on it. For example: you are describing my point as perfectionism; the specific fix is sampling one in ten on the critical bore, which adds two days; is your position that the fix is not worth two days. That forces the owner to engage the substance or be seen dodging it.
Ask that the minutes record the objection in your words. Find a senior sponsor who will insist on a substantive answer. Where the flaw touches a customer specification or a safety requirement, cite the document, since a written specification is hard to call perfectionism.
How a leader shuts it down
Require a written response to each substantive objection in design and program reviews, recorded in the objector's words. Rule out category labels such as perfectionist as a reply. Track defects found after release against objections raised before it, and credit the people who were right.