The Pursuit of Perfect
How many of your coworkers spend all day in search of perfect? Or, more accurately, spend all day trying to avoid making a mistake? These are very different things. Defect-free is what people are often in search of. Meeting spec. Blameless. We've all been trained since the first grade to avoid mistakes. The goal of any test, after all, is to get 100 percent. No mistakes. Get nothing wrong and you get an A, right? Read someone's resume, and discover twenty years of extraordinary exploits and one type. Which are you going to mention first? We hire for perfect, we manage for perfect, we measure for perfect, and we reward perfect. So why are we surprised that people spend their precious minutes of self-directed, focused work time trying to achieve perfect?
The problem is simple: Art is never defect-free. Things that are remarkable never meet spec, because that would make them standardized, not worth talking about.
Hopefully the point is clear, that he is advocating being an artist over trying to be error free. Your grammar isn't what you are selling.
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