The gift of imperfection

I had an interesting discussion the other day. One of my fundamental tenets is that success in business is about understanding what’s stopping you, and then resolving how to get past that. My advantage is that I’m not encumbered by the baggage of “the way things are” – I’m not caught up in all the assumptions and reasons that result from getting comfortable with mediocrity. So my approach is to probe away until I find the real issue then take a blue skies approach (or a scorched earth approach – depending upon the situation).

So I was with this business owner and as I probed he kept coming back with “no, we’re good on that score” or “yep, we’ve got that underway”. So I asked him to rate his business – current performance, plans for future, outlook etc. He said it was about 7.5 to 8, and I told him he was being modest, it was at least 9 out of 10. He agreed. And I said, “oh, that’s a bugger isn’t it”. He looked at me quizzically, and I said, “well, this is as good as it’s going to get. There’s no upside and no potential beyond what you’ve already identified.” He looked slightly confused, not sure whether to be proud or despondent, and I assured him that there was nothing wrong with that, and that many business owners would be delighted to be in that situation. The only thing was that if he wanted more than that, he’d have to look elsewhere. I know we can get a bit tired of what they call in Lean “OFIs” – Opportunities For Improvement. I remember saying to my mother when I was about 18 “I am so sick of growth opportunities! My character is now fully complete and I don’t need any more building!” But the flipside is that if we’re satisfied with everything, there are no areas for improvement and then we don’t have any runway. There’s just nowhere else to go (except backwards I suppose).

If you’re sitting there and you don’t have a sense of constructive dissatisfaction, I say well done, enjoy. Just be aware of the old Jack Welch maxim “when the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, disaster beckons”. If you’re thinking, things can always be better, but you haven’t got any sense of how, then I suggest you go looking for some of the gifts of imperfection that are sitting in your business. As my teenage daughter used to say to me, “biggest room in the house, dad, the room for improvement”. If, like many of us, you’re thinking that you’ve got more gifts of imperfection than you can shake a stick at, be glad. Then open one of the gifts, work out what a better future looks like, identify the next possible step and take immediate action. Make the most of it.