When you succeed at changing something, there are people who want to call you out because the change you’ve created isn’t perfect. Maybe you made some people upset. Or a part of what you were trying to change failed.
And I get that. Success is often presented without an accompanying story of failure, painting an unrealistically rosy picture of what change looks like.
But I also believe that perfection is less important than action.
During my time at Girl Scouts, I was in charge of a dying organization. One whose membership had been declining for ten years and whose relevancy was continually slipping.
I always felt that I had no option but to do something, anything, to set the wheels of change in motion, to put out the fire on the burning platform.
I know that not every action I took was perfect. There were big ideas that couldn’t quite get off the ground; things on my to do list of organizational development that never quite got done; and things that I thought were great ideas at the time that turned out to fit much more comfortably in the “worst idea ever” category.
But at least I was doing something.
It’s like trying to save someone’s life. The person who steps in and takes action, even if their actions are imperfect, is the only one who has a chance of making a difference.
The inactive bystander on the other hand? It turns out that they aren’t so innocent.
If you haven’t failed it means you haven’t tried.
thanks. i seem to have this issue with perfection, which i was contemplating the other day. my need to be perfect, have the perfect answer, do the perfect action has led to the very thing you talk about – inaction. but, here’s the thing i realized after reading your post. the perfection thing is not about being perfect but about being successful…in other people’s eyes! that’s a huge revelation to me. i have continually stopped myself from doing or even trying anything because (at my core) i have been scared of what others will think of me. so i get it (not just intellectually, but deep inside) i don’t have to be perfect, all i need to do is just take action and screw it if my action is a mistake. sorry if my babbling here makes no sense. but i did want to say thank you for this short, eloquent and needed post.
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