Life Hacks and Leadership
How to Find Perfection in Imperfection
I created better and more by avoiding perfection and choosing excellence
Why Perfection Is an Illusion
Suffering from perfection disease in my younger years, I redefined it. Imperfection brought more benefits than elusive perfection. Therefore, I created the title “finding perfection in imperfection.”
The initially defined version of perfection (referring to flawless) is not attainable by humans with no perfection in their bodies and minds.
Nature seems to create us and other beings as imperfect. The human body survives with imperfection. Nature itself is full of flaws.
I have no fear of perfection as I know I will never meet it, as Salvador Dali wisely put it years ago. So since I am not afraid of perfection, it does not bother me anymore. I made the notion of imperfection my lifestyle.
But it does bother those who still believe they could find it. Therefore I penned this piece to pass along my decades of experience and research in the leadership field.
With years of experience fighting perfection, I am confident that perfection is unattainable by human beings.
Therefore, I politely invite people not to waste their precious time and energy pursuing it.
The pursuit of perfection not only wastes our time and energy but also might ruin our physical and mental health. So it does not worth the effort.
Hypothetically, even if you reach perfection, ironically, others will not notice it, as humans cannot see perfection as imperfect beings.
However, this does not mean you don’t have to strive for quality and better outcomes. There are better options.
Paradoxically, with a growth mindset refraining from perfection, getting closer to defined perfection and gaining even more benefits is possible.
Therefore, I redefined perfection as excellence. We are capable of reaching excellence as we can excel with concerted and systematic effort.
Misperception of Perfection in the Business World
In the early 1980s, I met business executives in sizeable organizations who truly believed in reaching perfection, overstressing themselves and their precious staff members.
Not to my surprise, they miserably failed after learning perfection was unattainable. Through my follow-ups, I later found out that with lessons learned, some of those executives removed perfection from their vocabulary.
In the 1990s, I have also come across some perfectionist project executives.
For example, in a multi-million-dollar project, the team delivered only 10% value of the budget allocated by a wealthy client.
Seeing a 90% failure rate, the board of directors opened an investigation hiring several external consultants to understand the situation from multiple angles.
Senior consultants unanimously mentioned that the root cause of the problem was gold plating. This term cemented in my memories because it taught me a valuable business lesson I used as a principle in my projects.
Gold plating refers to the irrelevant and unnecessary focus (subjectively) on details on the cost of missing objectives and essential functions.
So in that particular project, the project team strived to perfect the initial 10% and wasted their time and budget, missing 90% of critical deliverables.
How to Achieve Excellence in Business
On a personal level, I achieve excellence by working in a flow state. Working in a flow state allows me to use my time more efficiently, producing desired results without agitation or boredom.
This state is critical for my excellence and for many other people I know who use it. However, everyone might not achieve this state.
So you might wonder how large business organizations achieve excellence with thousands of employees with no idea of the flow state.
In the early 2000s, the technology world started talking about agile. Initially, like all good things, people got suspicious. Some even called the idea “crap.” It is human nature.
However, wise ones pursued it and started the collaboration. So in 2001, the first Agile Manifesto was published with four principles.
This simple movement in the technology world rapidly influenced the business world.
In a few years, numerous agile methods started floating on the Internet. Some companies tried it and quickly embraced it. I was one of the fortunate ones to be in those collaborative communities.
In 2003, when I introduced it to a large technology project in the first year, the project made a significant profit. Sponsoring executives wanted me to present it to other projects. Thus, I served as an agile champion for several years.
During this process, I learned how excellence could be achieved in business. The key focus of the agile methods was delivering the minimum viable product (MVP).
The concept resonated well with the business stakeholders. MVP focus not only increased the financial gain but also improved customer satisfaction.
I wrote a lot about agile methods related to technology and introduced them within the design thinking context, which is another agile approach.
However, despite my efforts and proven success, some business executives influenced by the naysayers firmly became opponents of the idea.
Finally, I convinced some of them by giving prominent examples like Microsoft, which became a legend in the technology industry.
Using Microsoft products since their inception, even working as a consultant for the company in earlier years of my profession, I haven’t seen a single perfect product from this company or any other company despite perceptions.
However, despite their imperfection, Microsoft (as an example) got a significant stake in the market. This simple example helped me influence those opponents of agile.
Even though Microsoft initially did not use agile methods, they always worked with agility principles from the beginning.
Some opponents were using Apple as an example of perfection. Even though Apple products are high quality, it is still impossible to call them perfect. As a MAC and iPhone user, I can testify to this.
The first version of the iPhone and the current version has a huge quality difference.
Imagine if Apple focussed on perfection in the first version of the iPhone to make it of the same quality as the current version. Possibly, they could have been history by now.
So, after this background, I can confirm that perfection is impossible in the business world, but excellence is guaranteed with iterative progress.
Conclusions
Regular readers might notice that I deliberately spent less time on this article than in my previous articles to see the effects of gold plating.
However, I felt 90% confident this story would add value to some readers, so I penned it quickly without worrying about gold plating.
My gut feeling reveals that this article might perform better than the ones I put more time into by researching and adding many helpful links.
Of course, I might be wrong, but there is nothing wrong with experimenting. I will learn and act better next time. In the end, I accept my imperfection and work for excellence.
In this article, I aim to point out a critical misperception by individuals and business people who naively waste their time for perfection.
Unfortunately, I even noticed some writers on this platform seeking perfection and trying to criticize budding writers and delaying their progress.
Of course, they will understand their mistakes one day after wasting their precious time. Therefore, I am doing my duty of calling in this article.
Let me clarify my perspectives on imperfection.
Imperfection does not mean producing sloppy results. On the contrary, striving to increase quality is essential. No one enjoys a crappy product or service.
Let me give you an example to make my point. Let’s take writing as an example. Recently, a story of mine was enjoyed by many readers. I made an effort to provide compelling content with rigorous research.
However, despite my efforts, one word, “taught,” was misspelled as “thought.” But the context was clear, and anyone could guess the right word and understand it was a typo.
But unfortunately, the spellchecker couldn’t detect it. And editors couldn’t pick it either.
These are typical human conditions. Our tools are not perfect either. I saw typos in articles published in peer-reviewed journals or best-selling books by famous authors.
I don’t think most readers would label those content pieces “crap”. Only those living with the illusion of perfection might do. A typo in a time-sensitive text is not the end of the world. It could be fixed in the next version of the text.
The concerned reader of my text left a comment, exaggeratingly saying, “Great article, but it is full of language errors. The author and editors should have spent more time to perfect it.” Other readers nicely challenged her perspectives showing that not everyone was after perfection.
So in her eyes, I was imperfect, which was fine by me. But she was unhappy. Even though I had compassion for her, I did not worry about the situation and did not feel guilty about it.
As a principle, I accept my imperfection. I simply corrected the error. It was not the end of the world. I tamed my ego long ago to dance with my higher self.
So my point is almost 100% of readers enjoyed the content and gained value. So why should I waste my precious time for 0.001%? It is better to accept my imperfection and go to my next article to give value to my readers.
Wise business people and academics focus on the 80% rule. If an employee or a student produces 80%, they see them excellent.
I use this principle and don’t strive to get 100% in my projects. Instead, I target 80% success and sometimes reach close to 100.
However, I don’t waste my time for the last few digits to compromise on a more significant project.
I still work on improvement, but with less priority and complete in the next iteration as Microsoft, Apple, Google, IBM, and many large technology companies do.
That’s how successful business organizations survive in this modern world.
To conclude, excellent leaders, even distinguished leaders that I observed during my postgraduate leadership studies, unanimously refrained from perfection and embraced agility to give value to their clients.
I finish my imperfect story with eight takeaway points to add value.
Takeaways
1 — Perfection is impossible as no human beings are perfect.
2 — Spend your energy and time on excellence.
3 — Set objective criteria as your standard with feedback from your customers.
4 — Improve the quality of your products or services gradually.
5 — Focus on the most important and most urgent items.
6 — Leave the rest to the backlogs and deal with them in priority order.
7 — Never feel guilty about your imperfection, as everyone is imperfect, even if some deny it.
8 — Strive for excellence and give deserved value to your customers timely.
Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.
As part of my creative non-fiction writing goals, I’d like to share a few stories that might warm our hearts with a bit of humor into weighty topics.
Finally, After Burning Her House, Georgia Found Enlightenment
Hilarious Tips to Prevent Brain Atrophy and Keep the Gray Matter Giggling
8 Psychological Points I Had to Unlearn and Relearn the Opposite
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