Neil Carruthers had a suit that fit like it was made for someone slightly more successful. He was mid-thirties, agile with spreadsheets, cautious with opinions. A contractor. Six-month rolling gig. Billing at £700 a day to help “transform delivery culture” at a bloated infrastructure firm called Eaglenex Systems — the kind of company that wrote press releases about internal memos and hired two project managers for every engineer.
At Eaglenex, perfection wasn’t a goal. It was a paralysis.
The Monday incident happened in Meeting Room 4C. A long rectangle of glass and resentment.
Everyone was there — Delivery, PMO, Compliance, a junior from Legal who blinked like he was learning to see. The project was three months overdue and twenty-seven pages into a colour-coded Excel workbook that still hadn’t had a single task marked “Complete.”
The Director of Delivery, a woman called Mariana, sharp-suited and permanently under-caffeinated, pointed at the Gantt chart on the wall and snapped, “We cannot release Phase 1 until QA signs off on every single scenario. We have a reputation.”
Neil, for reasons unclear even to himself, cleared his throat and said, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly.”
The silence hit like a power cut.
A full three seconds passed before Mariana turned, eyes narrowing.
“Excuse me?”
Neil blinked. Thought about walking it back. Thought about smiling, chuckling, pretending he was joking. But something inside him — maybe the ghost of his teenage self, or maybe just the spreadsheet open on his second monitor — pushed him on.
He said, “I just mean… we’ve got three modules ready. They’re not perfect. But they work. Waiting for the full gold-plated rollout means nobody gets anything. If it’s worth doing — delivering, in this case — then it’s worth doing now. Even if it’s not pristine. Even if it’s a bit rough. Doing it poorly is better than not doing it at all.”
Someone coughed. Someone else bit back a laugh.
Mariana stared. “We are not in the business of doing things poorly, Mr Carruthers.”
Neil said, “With respect, we’re currently in the business of not doing anything at all.”
Later that day, he expected a call from HR. Instead, he got an invite from the COO.
“You said something odd in the meeting,” the COO said, pouring himself an espresso like a man who preferred gin. “Something about doing things poorly.”
Neil braced himself. “I was making a point about over-perfection killing momentum.”
The COO sat back. “My daughter’s a sculptor. She said something similar. Art isn’t finished, it’s abandoned.” He sipped. “Maybe we’ve been trying to finish too many things that should have just been shipped.”
By Friday, they were running a pilot — releasing a trimmed-down version of Phase 1 to one region. The devs were horrified. The PMO issued disclaimers longer than the user guide. But it worked. Customers could finally use the tool. Feedback came in. Bugs were fixed. Real progress began.
Three weeks later, Mariana called another meeting. Same room. Same chart. But this time, three tasks were marked done.
She looked at Neil. “I don’t like your phrase. But I admit, it shook something loose.”
Neil shrugged. “I’ll trademark it if you like.”
Mariana smiled, just once. “No need. I’ve already stolen it.”
By the end of the quarter, Eaglenex had a new internal slogan on the walls: Start Small. Ship Fast. Iterate Better. It was basically Neil’s philosophy, run through a sanitiser. The phrase itself — the original heresy — was never spoken aloud again. But in corners of the business, whispered like a secret, people started to say it.
“If it’s worth doing…”
“…it’s worth doing poorly.”
And the wisdom was this: The fear of imperfection is a luxury companies can’t afford. The cost of not delivering is higher than the cost of delivering imperfectly. And sometimes, the person who dares to do it badly is the only one who gets anything done at all.
Verbal Alchemy 