Hello!

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How can we stop waiting for the perfect moment to start and instead decide to be ready? Over the end-of-year break, I had to decide if I wanted to start a new coaching program on AI, it was now or never. But I felt I was not ready.

And I am not alone. So many projects, strategies, and business ideas stay stuck in “draft” mode because we think we’re not ready. But there is a price to pay to wait.

We believe readiness is a feeling — that we'll just know when it's time. But that moment rarely arrives. And perfectionism, masked as preparation, keeps them from starting.

Today I will cover:

• Why waiting to feel ready is often a trap
• The invisible cost of perfectionism
• Three practical ways to decide you’re ready and how I use it.

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✨ Spark

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✏ Illusion of feeling ready.

Why would we wait to start? I often see my clients waiting for mastery before sharing a skill they have with their teams, or acquiring 80% of the experience before applying for the next job. I also see teams developing a perfect prototype before engaging clients.

So what's the risk of waiting to be ready?

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It's about delaying an action, because we think with more time and preparation, the chance of success is higher.

It might have to do with self-esteem or confidence. Or probably with perfectionism.

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✏ Fear and perfectionism

A perfectionist mindset is everywhere:

• A freelancer who wants a perfect website before engaging in conversation with clients
• A team that wants to test the feasibility of the solution before diving deeper into the customer's needs
• A leader who wants a perfect pitch before starting to sell an idea internally

When I witness that, I often share this quote with my teams 😉:

And here I am not talking about launching a safe drug, but all the other aspects of our work. Perfection is the enemy of progress.And if this drives decisions, we are in trouble.

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✏ It is hard to decide to be ready, even harder never to be ready

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In a volatile environment, the pursuit of being ready to start or decide often comes with a hidden cost: the cost of inaction. But in reality, we tend to overestimate the cost of action, while discarding the cost of inaction.

Also, as we don't start, it keeps us in our imaginations about what we could do and say, leading to frustration. "We suffer more in imagination than in reality," Seneca said.

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So get into motion and reality!

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And decide that being ready is not a feeling. It is a decision.

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✨ Hack

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When I left my corporate job, I realized I could easily start, even though I felt I was not ready: starting a business, coaching my first team, giving my 1st keynote...

So here are the 3 tips that help me decide I am ready, even if I am not.

✏ Tip 1: Set deadlines and constraints

One of my preferred quotes when I coach teams or individuals is "you don't need more time; you need a deadline." (I bet they are tired of me saying that 😅 after six months of coaching.) And it works. What if you constantly reframe your "I need more time" to "I need a deadline?"

And here, use any event as an opportunity to give yourself a deadline: the end of a training, the end of the year, the end of the quarter, the onboarding of a new team member...

For example, when I started a one-year certification in systemic coaching back in September 2024, I set a deadline of 100 hours of coaching on GenAI at the end of the training. It was not easy, I gave some free coaching sessions, but I succeeded (yes, I will be certified soon 💪).

No deadlines mean no sense of urgency or commitment, even when motivation is high at the start!

So, mid-2025 is now in 6 weeks, how can you use the end of June as a deadline?

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✏ Tip 2: Make a public commitment

A deadline is a good start, but nothing replaces public accountability. Commitment means staying loyal to what you said you would do long after the initial excitement is gone.

Commitment could be

• With everyone, for example, on social media
• With a group of people
• With only one accountability partner

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Let me give examples:

• This newsletter is always a challenge to prioritize (like this one, it is 23 pm and I am finishing it..). So I often post on LinkedIn "I will share this topic tomorrow"... I make a public commitment.
• When I launched my coaching program for individuals to build skills and mindset to work with GenAI (ScaleU), I sold the program to 4 people, but didn't have the content ready. I committed a group of people (my paying customers). It was really challenging, but it worked. Now, 12 students have been enrolled since the launch in February 2025. And they are very happy (coming from Roche, BMS, or entrepreneurs and CEO of small-sized company in sustainability). So I was right to decide to be ready and start!

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📣 Last ScaleU cohort before summer! Register by May 16th to prepare for our May 23rd group coaching kickoff (3 spots remaining)

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Commitment to a group can also be with your family. I like to share some of my goals (sports goals, or sales targets) with my teenagers and have conversations about progress. They're good motivators and challengers ( 😅 sometimes tougher than my clients).

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Tip 3: Break it into smaller pieces​
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This one might sound obvious, to break into small steps your goal.

But we tend to have too many significant steps or milestones. So the goal here is to make it small and never break the commitment. If you can not do the entire step, "reduce the scope, don't break the chain" (as James Clear explains in his book Atomic Habits).

For example, for my 6-week coaching program on GenAI, I had a small step of 1 week of content to develop. And when I was really behind, instead of doing 6 lessons, I would do 3 or 4 and then continue the following week.

So, the invitation here is, how could you break one of your tasks you wait to feel ready for, into small steps? And how to plan to reduce the scope, so you don't break the commitment?

Remember, being ready is not a feeling, it is a decision!

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What's up with me?

I had the chance to lead two innovation programs in Diabetes solutions (physical delivery and digital solutions). It was a lot of fun and immensely rewarding to see the teams' progress over the four months and the quality of their pitches to the board of directors.

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