Gives Us Your Best Mistakes
Perfection Is Overrated
Nothing is perfect.
A “perfect game” in baseball can include all kinds of mistakes and miscues. It isn’t perfect at all. But in a “perfect game”, none of those mistakes result in anyone getting on base.
We should strive to be amazing, but when we give ourselves the freedom to be less-than-perfect some pretty cool things can happen.
Post-It Notes were invented when 3M scientist Dr. Spencer Silver was attempting to develop a super-sticky adhesive. Instead, he invented the opposite… a low-stick reusable product.
Corn Flakes, Silly Putty, chocolate chip cookies, and LSD were all invented because someone was screwing around and came up with something really cool by mistake.
Great music is like that.
Some of the greatest songs exist because a group of musicians were screwing around in the studio and came up with something incredible.
And in some cases, the actual mistakes they made are part of the end result.
The Police debut album Outlandos d’Amour contained the massive hit “Roxanne”, a song that includes one of rock’s most famous mistakes.
When Sting went into the studio to record his vocal tracks, he accidentally stumbled backward into a piano. His butt landed on the keyboard, setting off a sour note. Sting laughed at his own clumsiness… and then proceeded to sing the vocal track.
In the recording studio, the engineers caught all of it on tape. And when they played it back, the sour piano note - played by Sting’s ass - actually worked! So did the laughter that followed. They made the decision to leave it all in the song.
Have a listen. About 5 seconds in, you’ll hear the awkward off-key piano note. And about 3 seconds later, you’ll hear Sting laugh.
This was nothing more than a mistake.
Yet there it is, nearly a half-century later. It remains an essential part of one of the greatest songs in rock history.
In our quest for perfection, we often forget to let ourselves screw around. We fail to give ourselves permission to stumble. We seek out a predetermined outcome we call success, and label anything else a failure.
Great ideas come from creative minds messing around without any care for the outcome. So when the stakes permit it, why wouldn’t you give your team the freedom to come up with some crazy ideas? Maybe your team takes an hour or two every week and just fools around like musicians in the studio. Perhaps your coding team comes up with some wild new app or your sales team creates a groundbreaking new solution. Or your lead singer’s ass hits a sour note on a piano.
Who knows?
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