I recently sent these two messages to the team at Drift:
Waiting for “Perfect” is something we must avoid. Waiting for perfect can look like this:
- Waiting until you have consensus. (We avoid consensus at Drift)
- Waiting for perfect information. (During “the village” phase you need to be comfortable making decisions with 60%, best case 70% information)
- Waiting until we have had a chance to rewrite all the things. (Engineers love to fall into this one)
- Waiting until we have the perfect strategy / tool / framework / process / etc.
- Waiting until we have the perfect setup / rig / studio / equipment / people.
Waiting for perfect is a trap. We all fall into it. We all seek it. But it never comes. It’s an illusion. It’s an illusion that paralyzes you.
As we scale it is important to remain nimble and to keep our speed. Speed by itself is useless. Speed is only important at Drift because we prioritize learning, we prioritize learning from our customers, we prioritize building a learning machine. The learning machine is based on the scientific process, the idea that our ideas are always wrong and we must test them to find the truth.
Avoid the trap.
I’ll leave you with this quote from Jeff Bezos that I love:
– DC
PS. What is this “village” phase I mentioned? It’s the phase of growth Drift is in right now (from the book Blitzscaling)
