Forget perfect, be good enough

I’ve been thinking about Mark Zuckerberg’s letter to investors in Facebook’s IPO prospectus a lot in the last few days. Maybe too much, if you ask the team at Taskmaster Enterprises.

I’m not even sure I think Zuckerberg is that brilliant a manager, but I am sure that he has spent a lot of time thinking about culture. He’s borrowed bits and bobs from everywhere – for example, you can see plenty of Apple in his core values (no pun intended, although that is pretty funny!).

One of the key parts of the “hacker” culture that underpins Facebook is the idea that “done is better than perfect”.

I like this idea. Like many people, I know I’ve been guilty of spending too much time on a product/service/project trying to get everything just right, when I should have got it out in the world and worked to improve it when the feedback came.

Having perfectionists is great in areas like administration or compliance, but in a growing business the accent needs to be on speed. And that’s hard to build when you’re agonising over every last detail.

Get it done – today!