Let me open with something challenging: seeking perfection, even in oneself, demonstrates a certain kind of arrogance.

Another provocative take: seeking perfection in oneself suggests that you lack the level of insight a leader needs.

And sometimes, just sometimes, perfectionism is actually procrastination. It’s like waiting for the ‘right moment’ that never comes.

Okay, okay, a baby’s smile, the moment the dawn sun appears on the horizon, a bluebell in spring, a full moon – these gifts from nature can be perfect.

But anything remotely dynamic or multifaceted? Phenomena like that – much of what we call reality! – can only ever be ‘good enough’. And while that ‘good enough’ might be very good indeed, it can never be ‘perfect’.

Take a presentation or a report in the work context. Some aspect of any such thing could be improved on. Some data that’s ever so slightly out of date by the time it goes into the wild. Some angle or turn of phrase. The timing. The delivery. This is the nature of life, of the world. Everything is in flux. Everything is interrelated. Everything is complex.

Entertaining the idea of ‘perfect’ is to deny complexity. Think of people harking back to the ‘Swinging 60s’ as if it was one long, extremely hip party, or getting misty-eyed in the comments over videos of the 1990s (“Not a mobile in sight. Simpler times!”). Reducing entire decades to some perfect essence, ignoring the myriad of other imperfect things going on.

Human beings are also complex and constantly in flux. Our essence might be perfect – like the other examples from nature – but our behaviours and our output, profoundly dynamic, infinitesimally variable and essentially interrelated, can never be ‘perfect’. Not to recognise this is to demonstrate the lack of insight I propose in the opening of this piece.

And why is it arrogant to presume the possibility of perfection? It’s like someone gritting their teeth, clenching their mind, and saying ‘Well, you might not be able achieve perfection, but I can!’ Someone like this becomes tunnel-visioned – all they can see are the imperfections keeping them from perfection, when imperfections are, in fact, perfectly normal. 

A perfection-hunter closes their eyes to the myriad of other factors they ought to be recognising: the extent to which their project or presentation was good, or excellent, or outstanding; how it was received, really received, not the projection from their own perfection-obsessed mind; and how now to let go and move onto the next thing.

In work, obsessing over imperfections also demeans the positive input of others. How good could their input have been, after all, if that thing they contributed to wasn’t perfect? Unless we cut ourselves off from the world entirely, our existence is intimately tied to others. So don’t blame them that your impossible dream hasn’t been realised.

Of course, make your work as good as possible – I’m not saying to allow each and every mistake, to ignore every possible improvement – but know when enough’s enough. The writer’s aphorism ‘Don’t get it right, get it written’ comes to mind here.

To close, may I propose one other example of perfection? To really take all of this on board and to live from it in your life and leadership would be a ‘perfect’ achievement, I think. But go easy on yourself if you don’t quite get there – I certainly haven’t!