Don’t let perfection be the enemy of productivity

I recently read an interesting article from the Harvard Business Review entitled ‘ Don’t let perfection be the enemy of productivity. The title resonated with me as I have at times been accused of being a perfectionist and I have to occasionally remember to ask myself the question ‘ Does it matter?’ This stops me from getting hung up on things that I know could be better – but do they really need to be perfect?

I am a great believer that attention to detail and having perfectionist traits is a good thing for business leaders – who, after all, should be ‘leading by example’, but does everything have to be perfect?

The answer is undoubtedly NO for some things but YES for others.

What we have to do as business leaders is to make the call on what needs to be near perfect and what doesn’t. A good example where ‘near perfect’ is desirable is Business Contracts and that’s why we use lawyers for such things.

An example of where we should recognise we rarely reach perfection is recruitment. We write job specifications that only Superman or Superwoman would meet yet we know these are fictional characters!

That said we should aim high, but inevitably we will meet candidates who don’t match all our criteria but bring added value in other areas, and that is when we must compromise and recognise that perfection is an aspiration rather than a necessity.

Most great business leaders I have met are great decision-makers – that doesn’t mean they always make the right decision first time, more that they don’t procrastinate whilst they try and make sure the decision is 100% perfect.

After all no one is perfect and trying to achieve perfection in all things is tricky to say the least.

The leader of Maropost, is one of the fastest-growing companies in Canada — currently valued at more than a half-billion dollars recently wrote: Perfection doesn’t exist, entrepreneurs are a funny breed, always demanding perfection — myself included. The truth is, your product or service will never be perfect and you should never assume it is. But to keep your customers happy you should always be striving for improvement. This mentality forces you to constantly look for ways to enhance your offer. It leads to innovation, product or service improvements and ultimately business growth.

In recent years we have seen the emergence of the term Minimum Viable Product (MVP) which is defined by Wikipedia as: a version of a product with just enough features to be usable by early customers who can then provide feedback for future product development. Historically it would have been unheard of to unleash a product or service on a customer that wasn’t nearly perfect but the world has changed and we must accept that if we are to lead great businesses in today’s world we must play by these new rules.

Ziad Abdelnour, a Lebanese-born American investment banker, financier, activist, said .— ‘There’s no need to be perfect to inspire others. Let people get inspired by how you deal with your imperfections.’

Sometimes just understanding that other business leaders are having the same thoughts and challenges as you and talking these through can help relieve the pressure and stress of being at the top. This is one of the many benefits of being on a Pabasso peer advisory board. It’s in the DNA of most business leaders to always be seeking perfection – but is perfection necessary or indeed achievable?