Perfect – the Enemy of Done

Every entrepreneurial company, regardless of size, never has enough people, money and time to accomplish all the goals its leaders can envision for it. Its the nature of the beast.

Given that resources are always deficient in someway, its imperative to remember that perfect is the enemy of done. EOS advocates the 20/80 rule. Focus on accomplishing the 20% of the task at hand that will get you 80% of the result.

Leaders who try for perfect tend to keep refining, touching up, worrying that they missed something, testing, retesting, and then testing again.

For example, if you don’t have a documented customer service process in place that represents what for you are your best practices for achieving customer delight you are faced with a choice.

You can spend the next couple of months (quarters, year?) researching other people’s best practices in your industry, deciding which of those to adopt, then writing them up in excruciating detail, proofing them, running them in trials, analyzing the results, re-doing some prior steps, running more trials perhaps, and finally implementing them.

Or you could create them very simply, in a 20/80 rule way, by documenting the major steps in the process at a very high level, with several bullets under each step, which are the procedures. Then insist that everyone follow them. Finally, modify them, if and when necessary.

Which do you do in your company?

If you apply this idea to the six to ten core processes in your business, you will have documented your company’s WAY of doing business, as Michael Gerber of E-Myth fame would say, its your franchise model.

FYI: the six to ten core processes typically include: HR, Marketing, Sales, several Operations (the way you deliver your product or service) processes, Accounting, and Customer Service. Hint: If you decide to do this, the first, and key, step is for your leadership team to decide what your core processes are. Agree on them first and then have each functional leader write up the core processes for which they are responsible.