Brene Brown, shame expert and author, speaks about the underlying drivers of perfectionism.
Her research suggests that perfectionism is an attempt to avoid shame, ridicule, and criticism.
The idea that if I do this thing perfectly, you can’t criticize my work. You can’t humiliate me. You can’t shame me for not doing a great job.
Even my worst critics must accept that the work is flawless.
Perfection in imperfection.
So, in an attempt to avoid shame, ridicule, and criticism, people hold onto the product or service for way too long. They prune and polish until every flaw has been removed.
In theory, that’s great.
In practice, it’s catastrophic.
Why?
Because the people whose opinion matters the most, customers and stakeholders, aren’t included in that journey of discovery and refinement.
You could spend months, if not years, polishing your work to perfection only to find that the market doesn’t consider it valuable. Sure, they might applaud your craftsmanship, but they aren’t going to pay you for your work nor are you going to get that promotion you’re gunning for.
You’ve created something pretty, but it isn’t creating value, nor does it generate revenue.
Across the street, the entrepreneur that you don’t consider an expert is acquiring customers and growing opportunities despite an imperfect product or service.
They create a Minimum Viable Product, release it to market, and use the reviews, criticism, and feedback to improve that product in short, sharp iterations.
The difference between the two of you is that they are acquiring customers, generating revenue, and can leverage those feedback loops and revenue streams to inform what they build next. How they improve the product or service in the next iteration.
Audacity.
Over my decades of selling and marketing experience, I’ve often witnessed a kind of bitterness that emerges from the experts when they witness a younger, less experienced, less qualified person succeed in their field.
This idea that they have done the hard yards, paid their dues, and yet someone significantly less qualified and experienced is acquiring customers, fame, and opportunities DESPITE their place in the industry pecking order.
It burns deep.
My answer to the question of why this happens is always the same.
Audacity.
That younger, less qualified, less experienced person has the audacity to decide that their products and services are good enough to get started. The audacity to believe that once they acquire customers and do the work, they will learn and improve on-the-job.
They almost always do.
Sure, they aren’t the best when they start out, but a decade later, they have significant industry experience and a strong base of customers that empower them to do great work, partner with great people, and significantly move the needle on what good looks like.
That younger, less experienced person inevitably leapfrogs the more reclusive experts because they are deep in the trenches, learning and evolving from real-world applications and feedback, and building a reputation for getting things done.
Building a reputation for continuous improvement and excellence.
Abandoning Art.
Early on in my design journey, I was in love with the work I created.
Each design was a labour of love, from a logo design to a presentation deck slide, and I wanted some kind of validation that I was good at it. Validation that I was right. Validation that the work mattered.
The problem is that the work wasn’t very good.
It couldn’t be, I had nowhere near enough practice or feedback for it to be good.
If I designed 3 logo options for a client, my favourite logo was never selected.
Never.
When I decided that this was unfair and these clients must be clowns, I started to ship the options to social media platforms before distributing to a client so that I would have data to reinforce that my favourite logo option was THE best option for them.
It’s a shit day out as a designer when potential customers of that brand ALL choose a different logo option to your favourite.
Every. Single. Vote.
After a few months of this, I just decided to ditch the design ego.
It wasn’t helping me, it wasn’t serving my clients, and there are worse things that you can experience than rejection. A few months later I realized that my work wasn’t being rejected, people were simply choosing a different option to my favourites.
Clients loved the logo they chose and their target / current customers loved the logo too.
The more work I shipped, the better I became, and the more my focus shifted from creating things that I loved to creating things that my customers loved, and things their customers loved too.
In so many ways, failing to produce perfection saved me.
If I was wrong about what the best choice was, so consistently, there was no point in striving for perfection. There was only value in shipping what I had produced and using the feedback from customers and stakeholders to improve that design, that strategy, that piece of work.
In shipping things to market, in their draft forms, I could rapidly iterate on each design and polish it in a way that delivered valuable outcomes. It wasn’t long before I realized that these people were guiding me to my best work.
Whilst I was resistant at first to the direction they were taking me, even the deeply injured artist inside of me had to admit that the finished product was significantly better than what I had set out to create.
That I was better, and improving with each project, because of a community of people taking the time to provide feedback, guidance, and direction based on their knowledge, skills, and areas of expertise.
BOOM.
A weight falls off your shoulders because you no longer must be right, you’re now focused on finding the right answer, regardless of where that comes from.
Ship. Ship. Ship.
As I work with more experts, I often find an initial resistance to shipping their work, their thoughts, and their expertise.
It isn’t imposter syndrome because they KNOW they are experts in their field. It is, instead, a reluctance to declare themselves an expert. A reluctance to grow their personal brand as a valuable expert in their field.
To put their stall out in the market and start actively selling that expertise.
Why?
My theory is that back in the day, you were anointed as an expert in an industry.
A kind of passing of the baton from the elected experts and industry leaders to the people they deemed worthy of that mantel. The people they decided were eligible for the next stage in their journey to mastery.
You simply didn’t put yourself forward nor did you step out of turn.
You waited your turn.
You waited until somebody else gave you permission to be an expert and reap the financial rewards associated with your elevated skills and deep expertise in the industry.
It’s such a far cry from today’s younger generation who put themselves out on social media as a guru in something because they have 12 months of experience working with a specific platform. The young guns who create a video showing you how to do something simple, well.
Personally, I love it.
I love learning how to use a micro-feature of Tik Tok advertising that I have never worked with because a 19-year-old created a video showing me how to do it. When that happens a couple of times in a row from the same content creator, I follow them, and after enough value, I buy something from them.
They are 19. I’m 47.
Rather than be offended that a 19-year-old has the audacity to position themselves as an expert in a field that I have 29 years’ experience in, I simply learn from them and improve my capabilities. In my experience, they offer great value for money and that micro-purchase helps my business evolve.
Winning.
So, ship your work.
Put it out into the world before you think it’s ready.
Abandon perfection and focus on progress.
Abandon the idea that you need to have 50 years of experience at the absolute pinnacle of your industry to be audacious enough to put your stall out as a valuable vendor and consultant.
Ship the work. Hunt down the feedback you need to improve it. Use that feedback to create version 2 and then ship it again. Rinse and repeat until you’ve got customers beating down your door and cash flowing like a river into your bank account.
Sure, van Gough lived in poverty, yet his work now realizes millions of dollars at auctions. It’s a beautiful tragedy that reinforces our notion of a timeless legacy at the expense of thriving now.
Personally, I’d rather be Steve Jobs.
I would rather build a product that people want and keep co-creating better versions of that product with those customers until it becomes something they love and can’t live without.
I would rather be applauded and rewarded during my lifetime than rock the tortured genius vibe.
The key is to abandon perfection and embrace evolutionary progression.
