Not being a prrfectionist
I’ve been recently reading Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara because my friend Cedric Chin has been talking about it.
And because I’ve often thought that I loved hospitality. I worked in the kitchen for my mom’s restaurant, created a culture magazine for SF focused on restaurant reviews, and even ran an ill-fated startup in the restaurant tech space. I love food and traveling for food.
Setting the Table by Danny Meyer is another awesome book that I out in my recommended books. Vaughn Tan’s book about The Uncertainty Mindset was a great way to understand innovation in a new and food-related way.
But after seeing someone so great at hospitality talking about their craft I’m reconsidering if I’m really agreeing with the premise.
I’m not a perfectionist.
More of a “let’s get started, talk with each other, and see how it goes without wasting too much time” type of person.
This makes me wonder if I’m cut out for operations.
It makes so much sense that a person that is there to help people be great at something they might be very hospitality focused.
This came up again recently at a Product Ops Summit I was speaking at. Someone I know and respect in the community said:
“I don’t care if they think of me as a chief-of-staff or even an executive assistant. I care that we are helping the team.”
This made me also reconsider if I’m made for this role I’ve been working and advocating for the last couple of years because I’d argue it is a very hospitality-centric way to think about the product ops role.
I’ve got to believe there is a place for advocacy, adversarial thinking, and coaching without being a perfectionist. Or scaling the leaders.
Isn’t there?
Axioms:
I don’t believe that all performing roles produce “perfect” output.
Perfectionism is related to certainty about what is “perfect.”