The importance of imperfection.

My wife and I visited the Scottish National Gallery last weekend.

Getting up close and personal with Pre-Raphaelite masterpieces is a real treat. And since my wife is an artist who’s worked on everything from large scale murals for private and commercial clients to fine detail giftware for Halcyon Days and merchandise for Paddington Bear, my appreciation of the paintings is enriched by her perspective.

It's particularly fascinating when she draws my attention to aspects of the artwork that go against the grain of what would be considered proper technique. Colours that you wouldn’t think belong, brush strokes that when viewed out of context appear messy, forced perspectives, and so on. It shouldn’t work, but it does. And in fact, without these rogue and rebellious elements, the pieces would lose a lot of their magic.

See also, the numerous videos out there that demonstrate what happens when you autotune Freddie Mercury’s vocals.

All of this reminded me of a lesson I learned in my early career; that sometimes to make something look and feel right, you have to break the rules. There’s a difference between correct and perfect.

An obvious example would be when you’re designing a presentation or a poster. Most software you use in the process will provide a “snap-to-grid” function by default. And a lot of the time that’s brilliant. If you design for a living, then you’ll be used to making judgement calls on what “pixel-perfect” really means, and whether that’s what’s mathematically correct, or whether you need to get into the weeds of micro-adjustments. But if you’re involved in producing visual materials as an occasional aspect of your role (e.g. sales) you might often find yourself wondering why something doesn’t seem quite right, even though “the computer can’t be wrong”.

Ultimately, it might not make a difference as to whether someone buys from you or not, but giving over your power of discernment to an unfeeling machine is likely what’s stopping things popping.

Perfection in the mechanical sense is boring. And lazy.

Sometimes you have to nudge and slide and tweak things until they look right to the human eye. Yes, it introduces subjectivity and therefore doubt as to the potential efficacy of your output en masse, but believe me when I say there’s value in taking a critical view of something your computer tells you is perfectly balanced or centred.

The same is true when it comes to your business overall. Sometimes it may be the case that you’re doing all the right things, but still not getting the results you know should be possible.

In this day and age we’re sold products and “hacks” and templates that purport to give you the benefit of applying learnings from the misfortunes, successes and hindsight of others to your business. And the pace of modern life means we’re ready and willing lap up all those promises. If it succeeds, we can say “Hooray, I made a great decision!” and if it goes wrong, we can blame it on that third-party component. I said something similar when talking about “AI-nxiety” last week.

Or perhaps you believe your business is already performing to its full potential, and “if it ain’t broke, don’t try and fix it”. But is there a risk you’ve just done the equivalent of snapping-to-grid or auto-tuning, because you think that’s playing safe? If so, the broader risk is that you’re doing the business equivalent of walking in the middle of the road. Sooner or later you will get hit by a truck. That type of complacency - denial of the fact that adaptation is critical to survival - is when new competition arises, addressing all of the customer issues you were oblivious to because the money had carried on rolling in for a while. I’m looking at you, Blockbuster, Kodak, Borders et al. And those are old examples. With the AI landscape evolving as rapidly as it is, the phrase “disrupt or be disrupted” applies now more than ever.

While we’re on the subject of self-disruption to avoid self-destruction, here’s another musical reference for you. Gary Numan’s breakthrough hit ‘Are Friends Electric?’ was the result of what we now call “a happy accident”. That two-note hook at the end of the main synth phrase was not what Gazza had intended to play; it was a mistake. Now it is the stuff of legend.

So, mistakes can pay off. Not only can you learn from them, but sometimes what you consider to be wrong is just… different. It might even be the thing that differentiates you to clear the path for significant growth.

The point is, there is no formula for success. There are however, frameworks for determining what success looks like for you, and it might be quite something different to what you were expecting.

Let me provide a fresh perspective.

I have developed processes and frameworks that have helped organisations of all shapes and sizes across a vast range of sectors globally, to identify and address challenges & opportunities to improve customer experience, and increase the flow of revenue & profitability.

When it comes to redefining vision & strategy, we don’t have to hang the early sketches in a public gallery. We can iterate until it’s just right; then unveil a perfectly imperfect masterpiece.

Drop me a message here on LinkedIn, or via my website: https://www.dot-consulting.co.uk/

You can also check out my wife's work here: https://joanna-scott.com/

And if you're in Edinburgh, you can see most of what the Scottish National Gallery has on display for free: https://www.nationalgalleries.org/