The Page 19 Principle
Releasing ourselves from perfectionism and the paralysis of analysis
Dear leader,
It is not unusual for a book or article to resonate so deeply beyond a transfer of knowledge to the head that it evokes an emotional response in the heart. Less often, however, the impact serendipitously coincides with an encounter in reality that forever marks one’s life for the better. What happened in March 2024 cannot be conveyed in third-person narration in the usual Illuminaire Leadership Letter format of a research-informed and critically evaluated essay. Rather, it requires writing in the first person, in a more personal letter from one leader to another.
My early years as the eldest of seven siblings provided me with a natural terrain in which to learn the skills of leadership. Whatever the outcomes in my early leadership endeavours in a family context, it is fair to say I have since carried the weight of responsibility and pursuit of perfection on each of my shoulders. While this internal drive (mostly) served me well in my early life, marriage, four children, and the experience of leading in a complex large institution has assisted the necessary learning to work loose the grip of perfectionism.
Why necessary? Because there is no blueprint to guide leaders through the uncharted waters of global challenges and the leadership dance with humans. Today leaders, if they want to survive, must embrace creativity: the capacity to look at the world from different perspectives, tolerate mistakes, learn from failure, and bravely explore into the unknown.
Research tends to find perfectionists exhibit little desire to be creative, particularly the maladaptive types (read more about perfectionist personality characteristics here). Perfectionists like me don’t appreciate experiments, but if we did, we would only permit the highly-controlled kind, with low risk and minimal external variables.
In early 2023, I embarked on the riskiest experiment in my life to date; to create what I believed had not been created before. There was no blueprint, no map. All I had was a compass: the desire to combine research data with strategic insight in a publication series wrapped in the beauty of art.
I didn’t set out alone, but went on this journey with a group of people who shared my vision and while like me they had never created something like this, they had the important skills I didn’t have. It took about a year to create and produce, and on International Women’s Day, several thousand units representing the outcome of our collective efforts arrived at my front door.
Nervous and excited, it took a few hours to marshal the courage to open the first publication. Armed with high expectations, like most perfectionists, it didn’t take much time to spot the errors. Initially minor, and probably not easily spotted by readers outside the minutia of the writing process, all of a sudden, my worst nightmare became a reality: a full blank space on one page. No text. No images. Nothing.
How had three experts (including me) missed the extraordinarily blank page at the printing pre-proof stage of review? As the pain of perfectionism swept through my entire body, I panicked. After an hour or so of swinging between anger and deep disappointment in myself, I remembered something I had read several weeks earlier.
It came from Seth Godin’s new book called The Song of Significance where he told the story of how he and three hundred volunteers in forty countries wrote the Carbon Almanac, an award-winning worldwide bestselling book about climate change created in record time with no important errors. He referred to the page 19 principle.
Desperate to find meaning beyond my mistake, I went back to the book and searched for the explanation. Therein a new truth was revealed to me. Seth explained how no one knew how to write page 19 or indeed any page of the Almanac, but it needed to be done.
He described a writing process where a few people contributed to a page, and then the next one, and the one after that. It was a process that welcomed the generous impostor and the eager contributor, all who acknowledged it’s impossible to get it right the first time.
These words provided instant relief from the pain. They became the necessary antidote to further release the grip of perfectionism, overwhelm, and paralysis in my life. In seeking to create significant work, I could now bravely say to my readers ‘Here, I made this, please make it better.’
I turned back to the magazine, looking once again at the blank page before me with fresh eyes. Scanning down to the bottom of the page, I noticed the most extraordinary thing of all: the page we had accidentally left blank was … you guessed it – page 19! Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.
Leader, if we are to keep reaching for future possibility beyond the known territory of here and now, perfectionism nor permeance is the answer. In the words of Senator George Mitchell spoken to the people of Northern Ireland after twenty-five years of imperfect peace, we must find workable answers to problems of the present. The prerequisite of the pursuit of such significant work is two-fold. First, a desire to make things better instead of waiting for the perfect answer. And second, an ability to ditch the ego and embrace the eco (system of collective intelligence). The work of Seth Godin and others who have embraced page 19 thinking proves it works. You and I just need to take a leap of faith and accept the invitation to experiment.
Yours sincerely,
Karise Hutchinson
Ps. Page 19 thinking is for all leaders, perfectionists and otherwise. If you have a story about a significant page 19 moment, please share with us in the comments below.
Want to learn more? Read:
Paul Hewitt and Gordon Flett’s (1991) Model of Perfectionism
Seth Godin (2023) The Song of Significance: A New Manifesto for Teams
Jon Stokes and Sue Dopson (2023) Ego to Eco: Leadership for the Fourth Industrial Revolution