While browsing my LinkedIn feed I saw a post by Daniel Pink. I can relate to what Daniel is saying. Pursuing perfection is not the same as pursuing excellence. I’m a recovering perfectionist.

The associated article unlocks a concept that I didn’t have words to describe.

Striving For Perfection, Rather Than Excellence, Can Kill Creativity – Research Digest (bps.org.uk)

For me, this quote says it all:

The results revealed that the more participants strove for excellence, the greater originality and openness to experience they showed. In contrast, the more perfectionist participants were, the fewer original ideas they had and the less open to experience they were. This suggests that an element of flexibility not present in perfectionism can improve our creative thinking.

Emily Reynolds

In product and service development, teams need to be creative. I encounter the “perfect” conversation weekly. There is a magnet on my dry erase board to remind me, Done > Perfect.

Pursuing Excellence Over Perfection

Engineering is an exacting profession. As engineers, people strive for perfection due to many factors. If lives are at stake, then it could be argued that perfection is needed. And yet, nothing is ever perfect.

We live in a complex adaptive system the pulls toward chaos. We strive to order chaos and fail. So, if we can’t control the weather to create perfection conditions, why try to perfect every product and service going to the customer?

This is where excellence steps in. In my opinion, excellence is knowing perfection cannot be achieved. And yet, excellence brings creators close to perfection by help them keep open minds.

Taking this one step further, excellence help frame answers to questions. Instead of saying “it’s impossible”, excellence says, “what if it were possible and how might that look?”

If focusing on excellence is a key to creating quality, shouldn’t that be the focus? It’s something to think about.