Nobody’s Perfect

Of course it’s true that nobody’s perfect.

The sports world knows that especially well after Kentucky laid an egg in the NCAA Men’s Final Four this past Saturday. Their coach, John Calipari, had repeatedly stated his team wasn’t perfect, that they were merely unbeaten. Well now they aren’t even that.

Perfection is a lofty goal that can present more challenges than momentum in its pursuit. It’s an objective that few sports teams ever pursue, because it creates pitfalls and landmines that lay in wait to trip you up.

The goal should be to attain greatness at the right time, which often conflicts with perfection. I don’t know if a CFL team has ever achieved a perfect season. It’s over forty years since an NFL team has and forty since an NCAA basketball team has. It’s not even conceivable in most other sports.

Unfortunately the pursuit of perfection is something that haunts many of us in the workplace.

We expect every meeting with our bosses or clients to be perfect. We expect every document we draft to be returned by internal reviewers without a red mark. We expect every performance review to sing our praises.

It’s just not realistic. But it’s what we expect.

I am a major contributor to this evilness. My drive for perfection often gets in the way of the pursuit of greatness. Pursuing perfection creates unnecessary tension and clouds perception.

Think about it when you’re hiring. How often have you doggedly pursued the perfect candidate? How often have you heralded their coming arrival with trumpets, pageantry, and a feast? How often have you been so blinded by their perfection, you forgot to see their flaws. I am guilty as charged.

It’s the same when crafting a new initiative or product. Perfection is positioned as the only acceptable benchmark. That expectation puts you in the deceptive position of concealing flaws that another set of eyes would quickly identify as fatal. All because we want to make it perfect.

I’m attempting to revamp my own pursuit of greatness to not include the pursuit of perfection. It’s important as I want to create a culture in all my endeavours of endless creation. Which naturally requires that all contributors share their ongoing work-in-progress, without concern. In turn that requires me to not isolate every word and subject it to a needless attack.

Think of the intense scrutiny that the young men on the near-perfect, but unable to achieve greatness, Kentucky basketball team had to endure. Under a less bright spotlight, I am sure that at least once last week, you felt the same way.

I have found that one way for me to learn how to pursue greatness is through networking. I don’t network for the sole purpose of schmoozing or making new contacts. My preferred, and hopefully my best, networking is with people who can add to my body of knowledge. It’s where I formulate my best ideas. From others.

Who I haven’t met in all this networking is the perfect person. But I do regularly meet great people. Motivated people. People on their way up. People who are up. People who have been up, down, and now heading up again.

They have made me realize two things. 1. John Calipari was right, his team wasn’t perfect. 2. Perfection is in the eye of the beholder.

I really wanted Kentucky to have the perfect season because a perfect record is something to behold. I am a Kentucky basketball fan, but not a nut about them. Still I felt badly for their players Saturday night who hadn’t tasted defeat. I was emotional, wrongly, because of my own fundamental attraction to perfection. Plus I have a real affection for dynasties, outside of those involving Tom Brady.

In sport and in life, there are lessons in losing, in having flaws, and admitting some weakness. Calipari said he just hoped his team would play well. They didn’t. They lost. They deserved to be out.

Tomorrow I am going to saddle up at work and strive for greatness. But I am not going to let perfection get in my way.