More and more we are finding our client’s pursuit of adaptability and resilience is being hindered by an entrenched culture of perfectionism. By providing an understanding of the roots of perfectionism in the human brain, we aim to shed light on the challenges it poses in the workplace and help you pave a way forward towards a more future-ready workplace.

The Impediment to a Future-Ready Workplace

In today's context, job security has become a paramount concern, and the threat of job loss has expanded beyond incompetence or poor performance to the risk of being replaced by artificial intelligence (AI). A Google search on "AI replacing humans" yields a staggering 12,300 results in news articles from the past year alone (that’s over 33 a day!), intensifying employees' fears and feelings of job insecurity.

We are seeing this heightened threat triggering a culture of perfectionism in the workplace, impeding the development of future-ready workplaces centred on learning, growth, and an Optimisation Mindset. The repercussions of this are costly, hindering business performance and increasing wasted energy and resources that are desperately needed for modernising work practices and implementing intelligent technology.

Why are Organisations Slipping into Perfectionism?

Despite decades of downsizing, right-sizing, organizational restructuring and transformations linked to cost efficiency programs, job loss is frequently experienced as a “dramatic vote of no confidence” and the experience brings with it shame and a sense of betrayal (Gabriel et al, 2013). As a result, even though the fear of job loss may be caused by efficiency reasons such as AI and automation, this loss triggers a threat to an individual's sense of self-worth, unleashing symptoms of grief akin to those experienced in situations of social rejection (van Eersel et al., 2023). Yet, this threat response is a natural and intuitive reaction in the human brain.

From early evolution, the human brain has been hardwired to solve survival problems and quickly recognized the advantages of being in a group (DeWall & Bushman, 2011). This makes sense, from the need to protect oneself from danger, gain access to resources, get support for workload and seek shelter. This survival instinct has led to a deep-seated need for belonging, as well as, a sensitivity to the social context within which we exist to ensure we exhibit behaviours and attitudes that help us remain within the group. The difference between our early ancestors and today, is that we build many of these social connections at our workplace, and as a result the threat of job loss triggers social rejection in the brain.

Neuroscience research has revealed that the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) is activated within the brain when it perceives the threat of social rejection (Heatherton 2011). The ACC sits in an area of the brain connected to both the prefrontal cortex, where we make rational decisions and the amygdala, where we feel our fight-flight emotions (Stevens et al, 2011).  It’s no wonder then, that the looming threat of being replaced by AI is triggering a human response of perfectionism in employees –an increased need to get control of the situation, to produce flawless work and avoid anything out of their comfort zone (including difficult conversations and anything that could lead to failure such as clear accountability).

The Manifestation of Perfectionism

You may think perfectionism in your employees is a good thing.  It may be, in small doses.

When it becomes deeply embedded in your culture and you want your organisation to be adaptable and your employees to be resilient and able to cope with constant change – this is when it is a problem. Perfectionism generates a desire for flawlessness, avoidance behaviours and overly critical attitudes. None of which are conducive to a high performing, trusting and adapting team. 

In organisations with a culture of perfectionism, we see a high level of mismatched expectations, multiple agendas and maladaptive behaviours. Wellbeing is often a challenge in these organisations, as employees are constantly beating themselves up (or others) when anything falls short of their expectations, and they exist in a constant state of avoiding mistakes.  They exhibit an inflexible and rigid approach to work, shutting down ideas and fault-finding anything new, which is brought on by their own “all-or-nothing” judgment. If any problems or issues arise, it is greeted as a “total failure” and they get stuck dwelling in the problem and the blame. Additionally, this perfectionism is not limited to specific areas, we see these employees pursue this need for perfection constantly, even if the situation doesn’t require it – because if they don’t, they feel that someone may see them as incompetent, or replaceable, and … they will face the potential social rejection of losing their job.

Moving Employees Toward an Optimisation Mindset

Shifting employees to become adaptive, requires transitioning them from a perfectionist culture to an Optimisation Mindset.  In a workplace, this involves the very challenging practice of culture change, as the perfectionism is grounded in the social context of the organisation. To overcome this challenge, you need to focus on clarity and commit to four key actions.

1.     Change the Narrative

Shift away from the desire for flawlessness in small steps by appealing to the employee’s need for control. If you try to shift things too dramatically, your employees, who are experiencing a high need for control and low openness for change, will move to a space of defensiveness and resistance.

Use decisive language to set the boundaries such as “we will roll this out when it still needs work” and use comforting language such as “we are taking a cautious approach (and explain the governance you are putting in place)”

Encourage discussions about mistakes, acknowledge effort by using the language such as “what an effort that must have been” and “thank you for your effort with that”, and make a big deal whenever you witness a “learning” opportunity.

2.     Give Permission

It is well documented that people are notoriously bad at forecasting into the future.  This has been labelled the “Planning Fallacy” (Roy, 2003). Perfectionistic employees who are trying to avoid mistakes, are particularly vulnerable to this and will experience discomfort when asked to calculate or estimate anything that contains a margin of error – such as estimating the time it takes to complete a task, or preparing a budget. We often see them avoid or give non-committal responses to such tasks. To address this, set up a structure that gives employees permission for error.  Establish company-approved tolerance levels, that change the closer you are to the date of delivery. For instance, if you are forecasting something for tomorrow, you might have a 99% confidence in its accuracy (1% margin of error), if it is for next week, it would be 80% confidence level, next month could be 70% confidence. And so forth. Let people know you don’t expect them to get everything right. External factors often impact our accuracy, things we cannot predict and didn’t know about.

Think about your Leadership Shadow – what you are saying, doing and paying attention to – and how it gives employees permission to behave in specific ways.  For instance, if you hear gossip about a mistake someone made, instead of ignoring it or shutting it down with a scowl, ask questions focused on what they are learning from it, and the role they play in improving and optimising work together. Rather than observing from the sidelines and offering judgment and advice, they have the opportunity to actively step forward and provide support.

Set up clear governance support structures. Document and share how progress is monitored, how issues and risks should be raised and what level of solutions and options are expected to be recommended at the time the issue is raised. Be as visible and transparent as you can. As you start to make progress through the change, make sure you are providing visibility of the governance processes. Share the reports that are generated and being used in decisions. Talk openly about where things are struggling.

3.     Prioritisation

Shift away from the desire for flawlessness in small steps by getting clear on the core intention of a change – what are the 2-3 core things it needs to successfully do (be capable of doing). Document everything else on a different list, so that it is captured and gives the employees a sense of control and being heard.  As you start to make progress, and more things get raised that deviate away from the 2-3 core things, keep returning back to the core intention.  Stay focused on these few core things and deliver the rest later as part of the optimisation stages.

4.     Reinforce the 3 Stages of Optimisation

Stage 1: Capable of Core Intent.

Get clear on the reason you have embarked on this change (also known as the problem you are trying to solve), from this you will be able to articulate the 2-3 core things the change needs to be capable of doing. Everything else is nice-to-have and should be documented for delivery at a later date.

When the change is capable of these 2-3 core things (can effectively do what was intended), it can be released and used. In the software development and project world, this is called “Minimum Viable Product”.

If, at any point, it looks like it will be incapable of delivering these 2-3 things, you need to stop the change immediately. We have seen organisations invest many millions of dollars into a project, only to have a consulting form close it down 5 years later because the vendor was never able to deliver what was intended – and we are not even talking about the nice-to-have features, we are talking about the core reason the solution was purchased. 

Now that the change is capable (can effectively do what was intended) and is in use, we enter stage 2 – Early Optimisation

Stage 2: Early Optimisation.

During this stage, we try to uncover the things we didn’t know when we released the change for use, in an attempt to commence refinement and optimisation. Often, there are things we didn’t know about, and don’t know about until months of using the system or process in our business.

During this second stage we seek feedback from everyone and everywhere, and we approach this feedback as data not criticism or “problems”. There may be workarounds we put in place temporarily to support the users, and we dive deep into the data and prioritise all the things we need to do to move the change from “good enough” to good. One client we worked with had 200 workarounds in place in the first week of launching a new system. These were documented and prioritised and everyone worked together to improve the solution and the team and end-users maintained a positive attitude because they understood that the system was effectively delivering what it was intended to do, and there were other interaction points that were unknown or were not part of the 2-3 core capabilities, at the time of launch. The team were now working together to improve and optimise the solution for the business.

Once the change is working well, its time to move to stage 3.

Stage 3: Excellence Optimisation.

During this stage, the change is working really well and we are now striving to go from good to great.  If we think about the S curve, we may now be starting to look at transitioning to the next change to create a step-change, which emerges from, and builds on the success of this change.

Conclusion 

Shifting your organisation to become adaptable, resilient and future-ready, requires a concerted effort to reshape organizational culture. By understanding the origins of perfectionism in the human brain and strategically implementing changes in narrative, work practices, prioritization processes, and building an optimization mindset, organizations can break free from the shackles of perfectionism.

Embracing imperfection and cultivating a culture of optimisation will not only enhance workplace resilience but also drive future-ready success in an ever-evolving landscape.