
From Perfectionism to Performance: What I Learned About Letting Go
“If something needs to be done right, you should be the one doing it.”
I still remember the first time I heard those words. I was barely out of high school, hustling through my first summer job when I met the entrepreneur who hired me. He was the real deal—self-made, disciplined, and relentless. I admired everything about him. And for some reason, he saw something in me too. Maybe it was my curiosity. Maybe it was my drive. Either way, he took me under his wing, and I became his youngest recruit.
One day, after our regular morning kickoff huddle, I asked him why does he conduct this huddle every morning and not let his sales managers conduct them?
“Feral, if something needs to be done right, you should be the one doing it.”
That moment stayed with me. Not just because it sounded profound but because he lived it. He ran the show. He worked harder than anyone else. And he had a reputation for getting things done the right way every single time.
Naturally, I adopted that mindset. I prided myself on the quality of my work. I didn’t just want to get it done ; I wanted to nail it. Whether it was building presentations, optimizing workflows, or solving operational issues, I took it all on myself. Why risk someone else doing it halfway when I could make sure it was done perfectly?
That mindset served me well; until it didn’t.
As my responsibilities grew, I began to hit limits. Projects slowed down. Bottlenecks formed and spoiler alert: I was the bottleneck. My team was capable, smart, and eager to contribute, but I hadn’t built the right systems to enable them. In truth, I hadn’t let them.
That’s when I had to confront a hard truth: My belief in perfectionism was limiting progress.
What I needed wasn’t just more hours or harder hustle it was a different way of thinking.
That’s when I discovered systems thinking.
I dove deep into Lean Six Sigma and Agile SCRUM, and for the first time, I understood how to balance quality with scalability. These frameworks helped me shift from “heroic effort” to “repeatable success.”
Instead of owning every detail, I learned to build systems that empowered my team to deliver excellence without me in the middle. I shifted from being the fixer to being the enabler.
Here’s what changed:
- I started defining clear processes, not just doing great work myself.
- I built feedback loops so the system could self-correct, not rely on me to catch every error.
- I focused on coaching my team, not just solving problems for them.
- Most importantly, I realized: done right doesn’t always mean done by me.
Today, I still care deeply about quality. That hasn’t changed. But now I measure my success by how well my team performs without me not because of me.
Because the real lesson my mentor taught me wasn’t about control it was about accountability. And sometimes, the best way to ensure something is done right is to build the right system and trust the people in it.