This is how imperfection can make you succeed

Would you dare send a possible future client an unfinished product ? I know someone who did. He sent his imperfect/unfinished book not only to future clients but sold it to anyone in the world who would care to buy it. This is his story and it contains valuable lessons for us all.

Fredrik Haren, is an internationally renowned best selling author in the area of creativity residing in Singapore. He just finished his second book : One world, one company (www.interesting.org/owoc) a book about companies going global and the lessons therein. Did he wait all the way to finish writing, perfect every clause, sweat each story and then send it to his publishers ? No. On the contrary he released it in its beta version to people all over the world.

The beta version invited feedback and comments from the readers, it had typos and other mistakes too. And why not, it is not the final version. He printed 2500 copies, of which 2300 were sold, 200 were given to away to people including to future potential clients (gulp !). He also sold 100 electronic copies and netted a total profit of USD 40,000 from an “incomplete” book.

In this story are important lessons for us all:

1. Learn to live with improvisation: We are not perfect and neither is our work. Tending towards perfection is more important than being perfect. That is not to say that you release half-baked ideas into the world, but rather recognize the point where sweating the small stuff is not worth it. Women in particular are rather obsessive about iron proofing their ideas to the point where a sniper bullet might hit them as they carefully put on that armour !

I take my cue from Whitney Johnson’s famous Harvard Business review blog on “Disrupting yourself” where she talks of not being too deterministic about plans because innovation by its nature is un-predictable. Therefore, forget iron proofing and get on with it.

2. Great work requires greater risk taking : As long as we hide behind perfection as a shield for protecting ourselves from criticism we will never put our best work out there. Fredrik believed in the power of his idea enough to send it to potential clients. It takes guts and confidence to do that. It also displays an authenticity to say- I am not a know it all and I am willing to learn from you.

This quote from Brene Brown says it best: “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change”.

3. Get comfortable with co-creation: Eric Reis in the best seller ‘The lean start up’ talks about the minimum viable product i.e. "version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort”. The new economy demands we harness the collective wisdom of the crowds. Fredrik has got great comments about which stories work best in his book, which ideas he should talk more about and which ones he can consider dropping. He has the input of people who he is writing for.

So here is to imperfections as well as hard work combined with the willingness to learn ! Which imperfect project will you launch in 2013 ?