Enjoying a nice walk along the Arizona Canal the other day to soak in our perfect March weather, I noticed an unusually tall 70-something-old man approaching.  He was dressed a bit like Gilligan and looked nice enough.  (Now that I think of it, can anyone really look threatening wearing a skipper’s hat?)  Either way… “Good morning!” I greeted him with that level of enthusiasm you can so easily muster on the perfect day.  “Actually,” he sneered back at me “it is afternoon.”  My first thought was that perhaps I had been strolling a little slower than usual, so I dialed my I-Pod to its clock: 11:04.  My next thought was “Seriously?  A stranger gives you a heartfelt hello, and your best response is to correct them?”  And an incorrect correction at that, mind you.

We are a Nation obsessed with perfection.  Starbucks is even building their current marketing campaign around it (and was the inspiration for my title!)   Right and wrong, correct and incorrect – just think about all of the words and phrases we have at our disposal to describe all the ways that something or someone isn’t quite up to par.  We look for the perfect job, the perfect spouse, the perfect schools, the perfect house… Judging shows like “American Idol” and “Dancing with the Stars” top the ratings and feed our need to critique. 

But in our search for perfection, we are ignoring a conundrum of sorts.  Because isn’t the truth that by its very nature, perfectionism itself is a flaw?

Perfect order
Let me first get a confession out of the way:  I myself am a recovering perfectionist.  It certainly wasn’t something I strived for; it is just how I was wired at birth.  If you give her a chance, my mom will talk to you for hours about some of the perfectionism quirks I displayed growing up:  Not speaking until I was almost 3 years old, and then starting in perfectly formed full sentences, for example.  I was the only child on the block that was known for quietly sneaking about in the middle of the night just to pick up my bedroom.  To this day, I can’t go to sleep knowing there are dirty dishes in the sink and newspapers strewn on the floor, but I am getting better.  Of course, if you are too obsessed with perfect order, you are labeled obsessive-compulsive, so there’s that.

The point is that we find comfort in order.  Life is messy and unpredictable and being able to put some structure to the things we can control can help us plot our way through.

At work we use agendas to schedule our time, walls to define our work space, files to organize our papers.  We label people and put them in boxes and then fill out standardized forms to show them how to move to the next box.  Training classes follow a proven instructional design process, Six Sigma evaluates organizational processes to identify and eliminate waste.  Our need for order shows up everywhere.  There is even a correct order for working through change. 

“Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit." - Henry Brooks Adams

There is something to be said for learning how to live life a little less structured and orderly.  Any business book you pick up these days talks about how organizations need to build nimble structures and cultures that foster creativity in order to survive in the global economy, and attract the new generation of workers.  It starts with a basic understanding that even in chaos there is order underlying the seemingly random events and ideas.

Learn how to live with chaos:

• Read “Thriving on Chaos: Handbook for a Management Revolution” by Tom Peters
• Identify where too much structure might be impeding your success
• Allow your logical order to leave some room for surprises.

Perfect solutions
The last time I was visiting Baton Rouge, I made a comment while we were stuck sitting still at a green light about how the traffic would move a little better if the lights on this one road were synchronized more effectively.  “Michelle, you can’t fix the world” was my mom’s reply.

She’s right, and at the risk of disappointing Oprah, it’s not like I have aspirations to.  But I would like a few corners of it to move along a little better.  Sometimes simple solutions are so painfully obvious you wonder why nobody has done anything about them.  Then you go to work and sit in a committee meeting tasked with finding ways to help the front-line employees greet your customers with more authentic enthusiasm and for every one idea there are ten people who point out all the reasons something won’t work rather than helping find all the ways it can.  Oh yeah, now I remember.  That’s why we’re sitting still at a green light.

Perfectionism can absolutely stall progress.  Sometimes it’s best to just pull anchor, point your ship in the right direction, and course correct along the way.  I mean, really, how many times has something played out exactly like you planned it, from start to finish?  So why do we put that unrealistic pressure on ourselves and others? 

I have seen organizations invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in determining the perfect solution for their high-priority issues, only to have the solution waylaid in the implementation stage when a bigger, higher-priority item comes along that requires the same resources to identify the perfect solution. 

Save yourself the time and money and try an approach that emphasizes progress, not perfection:

• Be crystal clear on the mission, objectives and desired outcome
• Set a framework for ongoing communication, key milestones and touch-points
• Measure and evaluate progress continually and course correct as needed

Perfect people
I first became aware of the concept that there are perfect people with Blake Edwards’ movie “10.”  While I wasn’t old enough to actually watch “10” when it first came out, the trailer told enough of the story for me to get the gist. 
 
At the time, it was hard to turn on the TV and not see the clip of Bo Derek running in slow motion along the beach.  I still can’t resist doing my best impersonation of that scene anytime I find myself jogging on a beach --which thankfully for innocent bystanders, isn’t all too often.   As an impressionable teen, what stuck with me from the commotion the film created was the notion that to be worthy of love, one had to be perfect. 

So I tried that for about a decade.  I set out to be the perfect student, the perfect child, the perfect friend, the perfect 10… The problem I found out with this approach is that everyone has a different definition of what perfect looks like, and a lot of those ideas conflict.  I just ended up confused.  And exhausted.

What I grew to recognize is what I love most about the people in my life are their odd mannerisms, their outlandish senses of humor, and their unique perspectives.  And thankfully, that’s what they love about me.  I think that intuitively we all recognize this need to be our most true selves and long to leave a bright red mark differentiating our existence on the otherwise ordinarily beige landscape of everyday life.   

We have a little more difficulty replicating this at work.  For example, we recruit and promote candidates we feel best mirror our organization’s existing structure and ideas rather than asking “Do we have a culture that will allow people with different thoughts, ideas, and approaches to succeed?”  Studies show that we like people we view as similar to ourselves.  But will 100 more of you really build the thriving organization you envision?  

Perfect people are the people who bring out the best in others by just being themselves.  They are the ones who challenge us to be better, by their actions as well as their work and words. 

Redefine “perfect” for your organization and learn to:

• Celebrate differences
• Seek out a wide variety of ideas and opinions outside your normal circles
• Allow room for imperfections

Perfect mess
Like a staged model home, when things are too perfect, they somehow lose their soul.  Life is messy and perfection, even if you achieve it, is fleeting.  The bumps in the road are what keep life interesting and what makes us human.

The answer to the conundrum in our search for perfection is that perfection itself is an illusion; and it’s not until we learn to embrace the imperfections that our life will begin to unfold – perfectly flawed and gloriously unpredictable, as it should be.

blog catalog