Completion vs. Perfection

There’s a big difference between completing a project and perfecting a project. Perfectionism frequently works against the drive for completion.

A final work product doesn’t have to be perfect to produce strong results. However, the project must be essentially complete.

A mediocre but complete film script can still be made into a movie. A beautifully crafted but half-finished script is largely worthless.

An unpolished but shippable software program can still provide value to customers and generate sales. A feature-rich but perpetually unshippable piece of software will usually generate zero sales (QuickBooks notwithstanding).

Completion generates results. Perfectionism delays or kills results.

How to manage smart people

  The other day, over lunch, a friend recounted how her boss was just like the manager from the movie Office
Space. After a few stories of cubicle horror related to said manager, she looked up at me and asked: “Am I an idiot? Or did something I did in this or a previous life make me deserve this?” I didn’t know what to say, other than that no one deserves to have a bad manager (Well, almost no one). Certainly this friend, who is bright, hard working, and fun, doesn’t deserve one. But unfortunately there is a normal distribution of manager quality, and many people with the job title of manager don’t quite rise to the challenges of the role. It’s often not their fault: sometimes they’ve just never had a good manager themselves to model after. Then again other times they’ve just focused on the wrong things.

What follows is some advice for managers on how to manager people, especially talented people. I worked for nine years at Microsoft, sometimes managing projects, sometimes managing people, but always with a manager above me. I think I’m smart, but many of the people who have worked for me definitely were. Over the years I’ve experienced many mistakes and successes in both how I was managed, and how I managed others. There’s no one way to manage people, but there are some approaches that I think most good managers share.