I’ve become convinced that content marketers’ worst days happen when we don’t agree on how to evaluate when a job is done. The disagreement often manifests as subjective discussions about quality, but it’s a bigger problem than that.

Take some illnesses plaguing content teams (mine included):

• Too many cooks all giving input (and stopping things from getting published)
• Scope creep
• Shipping slop with no brand identity or standards in the name of “speed”
• Checking a box instead of building something special
• Not knowing how to tackle a new channel or content type
• Frustration with external vendors (agencies, freelancers) who don’t seem to understand what you need

These are done versus perfect problems. Too many cooks means we’re chasing perfection instead of accepting something good. Same goes for scope creep. Box checking is about getting stuff done instead of doing something well.

I used to think that disagreements about done versus perfect were subjective arguments, and therefore I should have a bank of tactics and talking points to get buy-in, handle objections, and show folks that we agreed when something was “done.” That was a good – and imperfect – start.

An imperfect framework

I started with four fairly vanilla tactics to “solve” done versus perfect:

1. Know thyself
2. Agree on the goal
3. Document context
4. Analyze risks

Know thyself

A couple years ago, I interviewed with Peep Laja to lead content for CXL. On the call, he asked me, “On a scale from 1-10, with 1 being ship something obviously imperfect and 10 being that it has to be right, where are you?” Peep is famously fast, decisive, and bold, so I knew the “right” answer. But answering with anything less than total honesty was setting everyone up to fail.

I ended up taking the gig at Ten Speed instead of working with Peep, but the question stuck with me. Understanding where I’m at and where other folks stand on this 1-10 scale can help us find common ground on done versus perfect.

Agree on the goal

When we disagree on done versus perfect, it’s usually because we don’t agree on the goal. In my experience, the fastest way to get things back on track is to remind everyone about the thesis statement. Agreeing on the goal means that you always have something to fall back on, an impartial justification for why we’re going a certain direction.

Document context

External factors – the impending product launch, the CMO’s personal preferences – these things have to be documented up front. Since we can’t control them, we have to account for them up front — and addressing them as far upstream as possible saves us a lot of pain later. Plus, using these as guardrails means we can find objective spots to anchor our discussion of done versus perfect.

Analyze risks

I’ve (mostly) tamed my perfectionism by asking: what’s at stake if we screw up done versus perfect? I usually find that people leaning toward perfect are overstating the risk, and people leaning toward done are understating it. Showing folks that things are somewhere in the middle goes a long way.

Reframing

The problem with those tactics is that they still treat done versus perfect as some sort of philosophical discourse when we’ve all got stuff to do. Discussions about risks and goals can help build consensus, but it’s not a repeatable or scalable process. (And trust me, agency content leaders repeatedly have conversations with clients about quality.)

More and more I wanted something concrete, a process for determining “when is this done?” After hours of building variations and trying to account for every corner case, I admitted that SOPs for choosing “done” on every piece of content weren’t happening. Instead, I’ve moved toward a three-part framework: purpose, limitations, value.

Purpose

This includes the “goal” section from above, but the first step toward evaluating done versus perfect is to look at the purpose of the content. We’re establishing a thesis statement for “why?” and create a baseline for deciding if something is done.

Things to ask:

• What is this piece’s reason for existing? What is its purpose?
• What do we hope people consuming this content do after they consume it?
  • (Important follow-up: Why do we think they’ll do this thing?)

Limitations

This includes “context,” but is more tactical. We’re trying to create boundaries around our decision-making process so we can accurately decide when something is done.

Things to ask:

• What format are we using? 
• What limitations does that impose?
• What’s the deadline?
• Who is the final decision maker? (Warning: if your answer is more than one person you have a different problem)

Value

When people are leaning toward “done,” they need evidence that we’re still moving fast. When people lean toward “perfect,” they want evidence that we’re working to improve the content. The center of this Venn diagram is “value.” There’s only one question here, and I think it’s at the heart of this whole discussion. 

Is the juice worth the squeeze? If we put more effort in here, are we getting a good return on that effort? 

Answering this question accurately depends on Purpose and Limitations (which is why they come first), but assessing the value of our effort acknowledges the diminishing returns that come into play the closer we get to perfect. Professional athletes expend massive amounts of effort to try and get 1% better. We don’t usually have that luxury. 

Three final thoughts

First, I’m sure I’ve left some questions out of my list, so please share those with me on LinkedIn! 

Second, I think it’s a bit of a red herring to say that process would solve for this – to say that if we built things according to an SOP then we would know that things are “done” because we followed the recipe. That’s a great way to reduce your differentiation, to take away what makes you special. It’s also not the real world: we don’t do everything according to a standard process always and forever.

Finally, in an AI world our notions of “done” and “quality” are being redefined from week to week. I’m biased here (and will now share that my honest response to Peep was “2.5”) but I think we should risk imperfection over inaction, because of the diminishing returns I mentioned earlier.

There’s a very philosophical meta-discussion in there about choosing when to be done deciding when something is done. It’s easy to go in circles, so while this article isn’t perfect, it’s now done. ■

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Ryan Sargent is VP of Product at Ten Speed, an organic marketing agency, where he designs, builds, and leads content marketing services of all shapes and sizes. He made the leap from music to marketing more than ten years ago, but still plays trombone all over Colorado when he isn’t leading content teams or puzzling on jobs-to-be-done.