When to Say “Good Enough!”

Every time I talk to an audience about The Sticky Floors, there is always at least one question about perfectionism – that feeling or personal expectation that every task needs to be done to perfection. From the shortest of emails to the largest of projects, women in particular focus on getting it just right. We are wired from elementary school days to give our best effort to everything we do and some of us never learn to challenge that idea.

One of my earlier sticky floors was perfectionism. One day I had a wake-up call that to this day stays with me in terms of how I spend my time and how I approach my work and projects. I was six months into my new job at Fairchild Industries and I was preparing for my first big meeting with the Executive Committee. My team and I had been working on my presentation for over 3 months – right up to a meeting earlier in the day where my boss reviewed my presentation and even went through the PowerPoint slides. I received good feedback from my boss and walked away thinking we were finally ready for the big meeting. Around 5pm, I began to take one more look at the slides and then, at 7pm, I found myself still in the office tweaking the deck, building in more content, and going over it for the 20th time to check for typo’s.
 
Then, I heard someone knock at my office door and it was my boss, Bob. He said, “Becky, what are you doing here this late in the evening? You have a big presentation tomorrow and you should be resting up for it.” I said that I had caught a few more things that needed to be fixed and had added a few more sides to the presentation. “I want to get this perfect,” I said proudly.

Bob said, looking right into my eyes, “Becky you know your stuff and, in fact, I signed off on this presentation today. Your team has worked through this over and over again. You should know by now that this company is not paying you to be perfect, they are paying you to show up with your true strengths and as an authority on this topic of leadership.” “So”, Bob said, “this is good enough! Now go home and rest up for tomorrow."

So what’s wrong with trying to make everything perfect? Performing every task at such a high level gets us promoted, right? Wrong. In fact, it can be one of the most self-limiting behaviors we exhibit. Perfectionists don’t delegate because they think “no one can do this better than I can.” Perfectionists are viewed as good “doers” of tasks but not strategic thinkers. Perfectionists are terribly inefficient – every email response is as carefully considered as the budget exercise that is the boss’s top priority. Perfectionists get passed over for promotions because they do “good work” but they do not stand out as leaders!

The tough thing is that so much of perfectionism is how we are wired. It is not necessarily having great attention for detail. We need that in some jobs and it comes in handy on certain occasions. Rather, perfectionism is a voice inside of us that sets those high standards, not others who set the standards for us. In many ways, it starts with our own needs and fears- like the need to please or the need to not let others down, the fear of failure, or fear of letting go, or feeling that we need to show up better than anyone else. It’s hard to shake this habit if you have been acknowledged for it all of your life. However, recognizing the downside of always needing to be perfect and committing to a new way of operating was essential for me to grow, understand the broader business perspective, develop my team, and, frankly, not drive myself to burnout.
 
If you find yourself in this mode, ask yourself why? Do you feel the need to prove yourself better than others at doing something? Do you need to believe that no one can do something as well as you? Do you get satisfaction out of doing something or do you just enjoy being perfect?
 
Once you identify the personal beliefs that keep you trapped on the Perfectionism sticky floor, you can start to alter your patterns by practicing new behaviors that will get you noticed as a true leader. Specifically:

• Delegate!!! Let go of those things that others can do and give them a chance to do them. Free yourself to do those things that only you can do. Then, communicate to your peers and boss when an idea or project was completed by your team. You will be seen as a collaborative leader and a developer of others rather than the person who does the grunt work.
   
• Think and speak more strategically. Make the turn from being seen as the “doer of tasks” to someone who discusses strategic processes and who thinks strategically.
   
• Understand what “success” means to the stakeholders of a project. Are their standards as high as the standards we place on ourselves? Oftentimes not and so we spend time doing tasks to a standard that isn’t called for, allowing less time to focus on the tasks that will really showcase our talents and make us stars.
   
• Know when a task has been done good enough. When you hit the success milestones of stakeholders, the task is done. Move on. It may not be perfect, but it is good enough!

For more information, see Chapter 4 of my book, It’s Not A Glass Ceiling, It’s A Sticky Floor and be sure to check out our new Sticky Floor Webinar series starting this fall!

Click here to read Becky’s previous blogs.

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