Chasing perfection can become an addiction that’s unlikely to help your peace of mind or your business. It seems counterintuitive to stop reaching for perfection, especially since we’re often told it’s the only way to achieve success. All the extra time and effort to ensure every aspect of your business is perfect won’t move your company forward, and it’s very likely to drive you crazy.
“Don’t worry about not doing “it” perfectly right now. It’s ok, just keep at it, you will soon settle in it and then you’ll be glad you didn’t give up.” ― TemitOpe Ibrahim
There is no place for perfectionism in business scaling and if you’re growing your business, you’ll know the value of the trial and error approach. You’ll know what it is to jump in and jump out of that plane or build the parachute on the way down. The only way that we can move forward in our business is by taking one step in front of the other, regardless of uncertainty, or regardless of the fact that we know, we can guarantee we’re not going to always get it right the first time. You have to embrace the journey of imperfection when you come to creating your workflow documentation. There are a few key phases to go through when you’re building that documentation that will really have you leaning into that discomfort of not really getting it right.
MAKE IT
Firstly, you need to make the documentation. Whether it’s a job that you want to delegate or one that you’re simply picking up because you need to practice, just start. They say it’s easier to steer a moving ship and that is certainly the case when it comes to documenting processes. Open up a blank page, overcome the intimidation of the blank page and then just jump in and write down the steps, taking screenshots as you go.
BREAK IT
Once you’ve made the task instructions, you need to break them. Yes, you make it then you break it. Break it by testing those steps, passing them to someone else who doesn’t know how to follow the steps and have them find why it doesn’t work. You need to see where the gaps are and that can only be done by real life application.
FIX IT
The way you task instructions are going to work is by fixing them, they need to be accurate, they need to clearly outline every single step that is required to complete that particular task.
CORRECT IT
Once you’ve got that task documented up perfectly, chances are that in the coming months, or even years, that task will be changed over the course of time. You might take on new staff, you might buy new equipment, you might install new apps or new software. Whatever the case, there will be a reason why the way you’re doing it today is not the way you’re going to be continuing to do it moving forward. That’s the only way to keep your task documentation up to date and current so that it can be genuinely useful for the people that are relying on those steps to complete their tasks.
It’s time to let go of the idea of perfection and embrace the messiness of building your business. Mistakes are often opportunities in disguise, and tweaking your business processes can lead to success you never even dreamed about. If you want your company to thrive, it’s time to break your addiction to perfection.
