The Perfect Trap
Welcome to the Why to Wow newsletter which is all about inspiring the hearts and minds of people worldwide with the Power of Differentiation. In the Why to Wow newsletter, I share my experiences over the last 40+ years helping leaders differentiate their brands and products. I hope it will inspire you to discover and share your own brand’s uniqueness with the world.
I’d like to focus this message on what I call the “perfect trap.” It’s an obsession that tempts you to wait for the day when things are exactly right—and that day seldom, if ever, comes. It’s just what the Commodity Monster and your competition want you to do: slow down and devalue your product or brand until “perfect” comes along. As you pause, you, your team, and your future are in a holding pattern.
Well-intentioned leaders will pressure themselves and their teams to wait for that ideal time to “do it right.” As a former songwriter, I learned that there is no such thing as perfection in the world of music. Countless hit songs were created accidentally when a performer placed their fingers in the “wrong” spot on the guitar or keyboard and that “mistake” was transformed into something magical. Perfect, in music, doesn’t exist. It doesn’t exist in the business world, either.
Difference-maker: Don’t wait for perfect. If you hold back until everything is just right, by the time you launch your brand or product, almost everything has changed: the economy, the competition, your customers, and even the world itself.
Imperfect yet magical situations take place in business, but companies often avoid them because they feel uncomfortable. See if this sounds familiar:
Someone on your team proposed a great idea to promote your product to the world.
Immediately, you and others feel the rush of adrenaline, but then fear creeps in. “Marketing will never go for that” or “We tried something like that years ago; it fell short” or other defeatist replies begin floating around the room until the idea is dropped.
Paralysis then sets in as all progress slows to a glacial pace. Meanwhile, your competitors are moving at full speed.
Where’s the Glove Box?
True story, my team was asked to promote and launch a new car for a European manufacturer. As the cars were on a boat crossing the Atlantic, there was a flaw detected—it had no glove box. At first, there was panic throughout the organization, “How can you sell a new car that is missing a glove box?” As we dug into the situation, we learned that indeed it was a mistake as the glove box had been eliminated accidentally as the manufacturer’s engineers were creating a very robust safety system in the front compartment. No one realized that to strengthen its safety, the glove box was no longer in existence.
True, this was an error. But there was a reason behind it that proved to be its differentiator. The car was arguably the safest on the market and to achieve that, the glove box had been eliminated. There happened to be one other model, from a competitor, that also shared this uniqueness and that car cost hundreds of thousands of dollars!
We were able to celebrate this with employees, dealers and ultimately, customers. This was the most advanced, safest car made (at the time), it had no glove box, and it shared that distinction with a super-luxury model that cost multiples of it. Yes, there was some spin to this, but it was true, and the model sold well. Our client included a special trunk glove box that was a nice touch as well. And, by the way, next year’s model came out with a glove box!
Difference-maker: We deal with imperfections, errors and challenges daily. There is almost always a way to make it through and sometimes, we might even find magic, as long as we don’t fall into the perfect trap.