Progress Beats Perfection

Do you get bogged down with perfection? Are you waiting for it to be perfect? Although it’s important to make things right, making it or waiting for it to be 100% right may handicap you from moving forward. “Progress beats perfection”… almost always.

Early in my career, I had a manager who told me that we should just try it and find out what will happen. As long as we have a plan, know how much it’s going to cost, and we learn from the experience, then we should try it. If you have done an ample amount of research on whatever the task at hand is, then you need to move forward and try it. As long as no one is going to get hurt, then you must move forward with the idea or action. Waiting for everything to perfect is never going to happen.

When progressing forward you try something new, evaluate it, and determine whether you should keep doing it or stop doing it. It’s really as easy as that. Some people never move forward because they think it will be better or the situation will change. This may be the case, but if you don’t try it then you won’t know how to make it better. Successful people fail more often than non-successful people, because they try things and make them better.

For example, your firm has been debating on exhibiting at a certain trade show or conference. Have an employee attend the conference and check it out. If it’s a local show, you could just attend the conference for a day. Your firm probably won’t be out more than a couple hundred bucks and the employees time. If it’s a national or out-of-town conference, it may be more money than that. After attending the conference, you may determine it’s a worthwhile conference to exhibit. You will also have the opportunity to meet the trade show planner and be a speaker for the conference the following year. You may also be able to meet strategic partners in addition to prospects. The couple hundred bucks may turn into thousands of dollars from a project you learned about at that conference. It’s amazing if you try something, what you can learn.

Now the opposite could happen, where the employee attends the conference and discovers it’s not a worthwhile conference. Now your firm knows it’s not worth exhibiting or attending, so you can cross it off the list and move onto something else that would be a better investment of time and money. You don’t have to wonder anymore. It’s been validated.

Progress beats perfect! Do your research – Yes. Do your due diligence – Yes. Don’t get stuck in making it perfect, though. Try it! You won’t be disappointed. 

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