Perfection is the Enemy of Good
A few years ago, I attended a compliance conference. I was sitting in my last session of the afternoon contemplating whether I should skip out early to hit one of the Vegas buffets or power through the session. Luckily, a very engaging speaker took over, and I decided to stay. She spoke about building a comprehensive compliance program (I know, enthralling), but one statement she made in relation to building a program has stuck with me ever since: “Perfection is the enemy of good.”
If you think about it, it’s really a whole lot like “something is better than nothing.” When the regulators come, wouldn’t you prefer to show them the beginnings of a basic compliance program than say “we’re building a robust program and have nothing place at all?” This same concept can be applied to anything in life that you want to do.
Think about the biggest and best companies you know. Aren’t they constantly offering new products, updating their current products, and adding (or shutting down) entire lines of business? Don’t your favorite apps and operating systems have regular updates for bug fixes and new features? Yes! These companies know it’s impossible to build the best, most perfect, most complete product, catalog, or business on day one. What they also know is that continuous improvement is much more important than chasing perfection without ever executing.
As a recovering perfectionist, I know this is much easier said than done, but I have a foolproof four-step process to get you out of ideation into implementation and a continuous improvement loop:
Step 1: Set the goal
What is it that you want to accomplish? Build/improve the app, open the business, create a new product?
Step 2: Start the thing
“The thing” is the business, the product, the project, the whatever you want to do. Figure out the bare minimum you need to start the thing. For each of those must-haves, figure out the easiest, cheapest, and least expensive way to accomplish this. If you are starting a business, for example, ask yourself, what is the minimum I need in order to say “I’m in business” or to make my first dollar? Do absolutely no more than that.
Step 3: Analyze and identify improvements
After you’ve started the thing, assess how the thing is doing. Are you happy with the results? Are you getting feedback from your customers that you need to incorporate?
Step 4: Implement the improvements
Take the improvements that you’ve identified in step 3, and implement by following steps 1-3.
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Sometimes we get so caught up in creating the perfect product, deliverable, or business, we never get out of the brainstorming phase. We start overwhelming ourselves with the “what ifs” and “what abouts” that we never get around to actually executing.
Whenever I feel my perfectionist tendencies rising up, I repeat the mantra “perfection is the enemy of good.” Even though I know it to be very true, I still have to remind myself because it’s not in my nature to just be good. But we need to get to something and to good before we can ever get to great.
