Achieving Perfection Is Impossible (but Worth Attempting!)

Kahlil Gibran, the Lebanese-American writer most famous for his book The Prophet, once said, “March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life’s path.”

His quotation as applied to business might be amended, for if an organization is not going forward, it is “marching” towards irrelevancy. The desire to achieve perfection is a worthy aspiration, but it is worth noting that Gibran uses a key word: “toward.”

As leaders, we should have lofty aspirations; we should want to move toward perfection, but we must do so in awareness that we will never achieve it. Even more important, however, is to realize that the inevitable “thorns” and “sharp stones” should not put us off our path. We can learn from them. We should never lower our standards but accept that in the search for excellence, we are going to make mistakes. The question, of course, is can we learn from them?

It is my nature to never want to hear the 50 reasons why something won’t work. I want to hear the one reason why it could. The ability to consider a potential solution rather than dwell on the problem is precisely why I place such value on those with curious, inquisitive minds.

The creative thinker is inspired by problems because they see problems simply as things requiring solutions. Such thinkers like challenges. They find energy in applying ingenious approaches to concerns others expend energy worrying about.

With some applied creative thinking and some ingenuity, we learn to differentiate excellence from perfection. Moving towards excellence has motion, while achieving perfection may imply stagnation once achieved.

There are a couple of key steps you have to take to reach excellence.

First, you have to re-frame people’s definition of failure. I’m not suggesting that we want to aspire to failure, but if you are taking risks, even calculated ones, occasional failure is inevitable.

Second, our companies will never be successful if they employ a blame culture. In too many companies, when something goes wrong, leaders look for someone to pin the failure on and then make an example of punishing them. I’m far more interested in investing in those who understand deeply “the why” behind an initiative not living up to its full potential.

If they find it was due to a controllable error spend time on fixing the error and move forward. Good leaders invite scrutiny, reflection, and discussion on how to avoid repeating mistakes. Expectations about accountability, like those about striving for excellence, must be present at every level of your enterprise.

Accountability doesn’t just apply to those in senior positions or even just to those with management responsibilities. If the pursuit of excellence and its cousin, an acceptance of accountability, are not qualities present in your managers, they’re almost certain to be lacking among your frontline teams, who, of course, are the people who leave a lasting impression on your customers, clients, and collaborators.

Third, because we want our teams to strive for excellence, we must treat them with respect and recognize their contributions. When we acknowledge excellence with public recognition before our peers in those who go beyond the expectations of their positions or who demonstrate the sincerity of their caring for customers, we’ll see excellence repeated.

When we cultivate managers who demonstrate a simple human touch and pay attention to what is meaningful in a team member’s life, they cement respect and a sense of belonging that changes their team member’s perception of their employer and their job.

Fourth, I steadfastly believe that it is human nature to try to become the best version of ourselves possible. There’s no reason we cannot harness striving for excellence and apply it to the companies for which we work.

As leaders who take pride in our organizations, we know that when passing through our facilities and listening to the chatter of our teams and our customers, we tend to hear quiet mutterings of frustration as shouted discontent and announcements of success as whispers.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Because we care so much about our organizations, we take everything personally. That’s not to say we shouldn’t celebrate the small victories, but when we do, let’s make sure the celebration is focused on those who put in the work to accomplish feats of excellence. Typically, those team members have learned to take the success of the organization personally as well. And that expression of caring becomes contagious, which is a key element of getting us all further down the path towards perfection.