Embracing Progress Over Perfection!
“A book is never finished!”
On the bustling streets of Marina, Lagos, now dense with blaring horns and ‘Friday traffic’, The Muson Center was host to a serene event — a book reading session hosted by Sterling Bank Plc. The book “A Possible Future’’ — an anthology of the best Nigerian writing, between 1789–2018, was published by Kachifo Limited.
From the book readings to the panel session, there was a lot of insightful conversation. Temilade Aina, a literature curator, made a comment that stuck out, when she said, “A book is never finished.”
The statement, as simple as it reads, had a profound meaning. With a weird sense of déjà vu, it brought back memories of a conversation I had at an art gallery. I was curious about how paintings were valued when the art curator made a similar statement — a painting is never finished.
When posed with the question, ‘when is a painting ever finished?’, Mark Sheinkman says “For me, once the piece has left the studio, then I consider it finished. If the work is returned to me, unsold or for whatever reason, I feel free to make changes.” You can find that entire conversation here.
It struck me how insightful and important this concept can be when applied to taking a product to market.
If you think you must go to market with a perfect product, then you’ll spend time and money making it grandiose, and from experience, not even coordinating with stakeholders, or its final users. Statistics show that this approach has led to big failures and lots of money wasted.
Or you could adopt a lean approach, launch experiments to validate your assumptions, and constantly iterate with feedback. You will not be afraid to put your product (not done or finished) out there, or what you could call, a minimum viable product. It is imperfect, not mediocre.
Have you ever thought about applying the lean approach to writing a book/novel? What if writers had a platform to release content by chapters? Will this help more authors write quicker and faster, and get feedback and suggestions?
Please, spare 2-minutes to take a survey and share your thoughts here.
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