Thinking Out Loud – Episode 5

This is the fifth episode in a series called Thinking Out Loud. In these videos, Armando Lanuti, the President of Creative Works, shares some of his thoughts on business, leadership, growth, operations, and anything else on his mind. Below is a transcript of some of the points he discusses in the video.

Today I want to talk about a quote from Winston Churchill. I’m a big fan of several Churchill quotes, but this one is that perfection is the enemy of progress. This holds a lot of importance to me because it’s how I operate.

A lot of times when I’m working on projects in-house for new product or marketing ideas, sales promotions, whatever the case may be… an in-house assignment that we need to get taken care of or I’m working with some of my other investments or providing guidance for others, a lot of times people get very caught up in the early stages to try and make everything perfect.

And it’s not to say that you shouldn’t have some preparation. That you shouldn’t have thought through your idea to a certain extent before moving forward. But, it’s really important that you don’t get caught up on this idea of having a perfect situation before you start stepping towards your goals.

It’s really easy to get bogged down on those details to get overwhelmed and then never actually take that first step. It’s a huge issue that a lot of people face these days. They want that ideal situation. So, make sure that that doesn’t stop you from moving forward.

Along those lines, you also have to think about that once you’re actually in the process while you’re developing that brochure or that website or or that product.

You need to make sure that you don’t get caught up in the process when you’ve got this great idea, and before you start moving it forward you try to get it to perfection before you’re ever showing it to the public before you’re ever getting out there.

Unfortunately the problem with that is, you’re gonna make it perfect in your own head.

Without getting some feedback from others, and without getting some testing in the market place, what you might find is that you’re gonna spend a lot of time and a lot of energy and effort perfecting something that’s wrong.

If you can get it to 80% that is really your ideal goal. The last 20% makes a huge difference and it will be what can help separate, your product or your idea from others in the market, but that first 80% is really where most of the meat and potatoes are.

So, make sure that you don’t get get in your own way, with the idea that your website, your product, your brochure or whatever that you are working on has to be perfect.

If you’re not sure, do a smaller run. Do a smaller batch. Get. It up, get some tests. Get some feedback, because one of the other things that can happen often times is, you have this idea in your mind of what perfect is and you haven’t shown it to your customers yet. You haven’t shown it to your demographic yet. You haven’t gotten any practical world testing yet.

And then all of the sudden you get that practical world testing. You get that feedback and you realize that you were off the mark. So, if you work to try and perfect it before you ever got it out there, you might find that you were working to perfect something that’s wrong.

And that is a lot of wasted time, versus, working through that occasional struggle that you’re gonna have because it wasn’t right out of the gate. It’s much better to get it out, get some feedback, make those adjustments on the fly and not wait for perfection.

Those are my thoughts for the day, and we’ll talk to you soon.