Perfectionists are extinct species

Product management and perfectionism

One day when going through my uncle's library I found an article by one of the top man in advertising industry (I forget his name) he was quoted on cover saying "I am a perfectionist."

As a young kid, I loved it. It had a certain ring to it. It made you feel more intellectual than others. Finally, you had something to tell people about your characteristics, a word that may awe them. And if a man that successful is a perfectionist, then being perfectionist is the way to go!

Wow! What a kid I was. Certainly not smart enough. Still, a kid but having learnt many lessons in the class of life, I can say that statement is an utter delusion.

Perfectionists are extinct. They are dinosaurs.

It is important to draw a line here between perfectionism and striving for perfection or quality work. If you were like the CEO I mentioned above who "will do it until it attains perfection and only then accept it" kind of philosophy, I guess you are extinct. May be it suited the advertising man and the times he lived in.

It doesn’t suit now. We have to strive for maximum achievable quality. We cannot have perfection and by the time you get your perfect product out into the market, the market will be flooded and all that the competitors have to do is to copy your 'perfect' attributes. You are out of the game. Sad end for perfectionists.

T game has changed mainly because the time-to-market, whether it be product or news or information or content or book or research etc has drastically decreased, nay plunged, with the arrival of internet and its speed. If you cannot match the speed of optical fibers and social networking wildfire, you are too late. And more often than not, perfection cannot fit that bandwidth.

Product management committees in their blind desire for perfect product for customers loose out on valuable time. The period that will decide the fate of the product and finally the company itself. Sometimes, perfectionism is a perfect alibi for procrastinations or obstructs changes or being risk-averse.

The best approach is to work out the product to maximum possible efficiency, and then let the product out into the market. Most of the time, the approach is to rectify all the defects, deficiencies and bugs without taking the markets' view. That is pretty arrogant way of working. You are nobody to think that markets wants this or that. It is pretty much like trying to find out where the boats are leaking by checking it onshore, the best way to check that is to let the boat into water and find out. Of course, you have to fix the boat, before it sinks. The point is, you can never have a perfect product to start with, you have to work on many aspects even after you think you have perfect product.

The mistake product management committees make is to relax once the product is launched. There is lot of buzz when the product is initially launched. But when the market settles into a plateau most of the product managers sit back to enjoy their rewards. Contrary, this is exactly the time; they should rev up their thought engines to work out the modification, enhancements, extensions and new product ideas. This is because customers by this time would have sufficient experience in the product enough to tell them what features/characteristics are good or bad.

It is when the product managers have greatest leverage that they go on back-foot and that is one mistake.

Product managers cannot afford to be perfectionists. And every body is a product manager these days. Every body markets something these days. You cannot wait for deeper inspirations to strike you; you have to do with what you have got now. And DO IT NOW!