Sunday, October 1, 2017

Perfection is not the goal

Right after I got my first supervisory role in 1995 I got this coffee mug with the quote “Perfection is the goal, excellence will be tolerated” printed on it. I bought it for myself at Successories. Remember that place? I bought it for myself because who in their right mind would buy this for this for their boss? It seemed cool and bad-ass at the time so that was my mug for the next couple of years.

The thing is, this idea makes no sense. Especially when it comes to creative or people or planning work. You can keep tweaking (or futzing as my former boss used to say) creative work forever and delay producing until it doesn’t matter anymore. People, all of us, are hugely flawed, so forget about perfection there. And a plan perfect until the first moment you begin to execute. Then it hits resistance or unexpected variables and you have to improvise, adapt, overcome (thanks Gunny Highway).

So produce, create, deliver. Adjust, adapt and iterate. Don’t let the obsession for perfection get in the way of the excellent, the great, or the pretty darn good.

#waveon 

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