Maximization vs. optimization
I’ve found confusion around this notion to have far-ranging effects, both on building successful startups and on life in general. The stock phrase “Perfection is the enemy of good” is a too-narrow interpretation of the issue I’m raising here. When someone takes the wrong approach, it can have serious repercussions that are often difficult to recover from. I know you may think this is a trivial distinction, but hear me out.
In general, I’d posit that most people’s default behavior is to focus on maximization (whom I refer to as “99/1” people). Why? Because it’s very straightforward and requires little nuance. I set goal at X. I want to achieve 100% of X. I do what I have to do to make my achievement of X a reality. Now the method by which someone pursues X may vary, but the goal is crystal-clear. However, it is also true that by going all-in on X and by fixing its full completion as my stated goal, I have neither time-bounded X nor taken into account the other consequences arising from a maximization strategy. Did my work take too long? Did I actually do the right work? Were there others dependent upon my achieving X within a time frame that inhibited their ability to achieve their goals? Did I piss myriad people off because of my single-minded focus on fulfilling X such that I didn’t take into account their needs and objectives? Maximization can work well for tasks that require the utmost precision, have few critical dependencies and which have life-impacting consequences, but the fact is that most of life doesn’t look like this. Maximization can often end up reflecting an internal state of fear, anxiety, insecurity or selfishness, not helpful characteristics for building a great business, hiring great people or being a supportive and loving companion.
Being an optimizer means that even if one has the same goal as maximizer, other non-goal related issues factor into the strategy (I refer to these as “80/20” people). This approach can be summarized by the following: “Get the big things right: don’t sweat the details.” Optimizers aren’t less ambitious than maximizers, but they are willing to make trade-offs towards goal achievement that they view as enhancing the overall outcome. For instance, let’s say you are working on an early version of a product. The maximizer (which happens to be a persona shared by many engineers) is inclined to build until THEY are satisfied with the fit and finish of the product. Clean and efficient code is a must, and a product they are proud of is the goal. Of course, the problem is that while they may have built a product that works quite well, it might not be the product that the market actually wants. Time and resources have been wasted going down a path without sufficiently colliding with the market, which could have yielded brutal but valuable feedback that would have saved money and cycles (though not sparing ego). So while the control associated with building something THEY’RE proud of felt good, it ultimately was not the right thing for the company.
Optimizers tend to have thicker skins and think laterally, considering the array of factors on the critical path of releasing a commercially successful product rather than focusing on their internal state. Exposing a product before it’s fully-baked to a set of friendlies, perhaps looking dumb but garnering invaluable feedback before a design path has been hardened. Seeking to balance power and influence across product and engineering, which while adding stress to coordination can often yield better outcomes because of each area’s particularly competency. This kind of fuzziness in a company’s earliest days can drive 99/1 maximizers batshit crazy, but is often the right thing to do. Building a great product is awesome, but if it isn’t specifically addressing a key customer pain point then what is the point?
Finally, I’ll be honest and say that I have a strong bias towards action, and value this characteristic in the founders I work with. This doesn’t mean action without careful consideration and intention, but it does mean separating what feels comfortable from what is going to yield the greatest insight. Trying new things, exposing ideas to customers and other smart people to get feedback well before they are fully ready, and running lots of customer-facing experiments all require comfort with being uncomfortable. And this requires the mind-set of an optimizer. Until a company is approaching maturity and the emphasis shifts from growth to profitability, the mind-set of the optimizer will almost always outperform the approach of the maximizer. Perhaps this is a controversial stance, but experience tells me that this is a really important distinction when building things with multiple constituencies, be they products, companies or personal relationships.
