From Perfectionism to Play: Unlocking Creativity

In this joyful and energizing episode of UX Leadership by Design, Mark Baldino is joined by creativity catalyst Melissa Dinwiddie — a Juilliard-trained dancer turned artist, jazz singer, improviser, and innovation strategist and coach. Melissa helps individuals and teams get unstuck and unlock their creative potential, even (and especially) when they don’t see themselves as creative. She walks us through her deceptively simple “Create the Impossible” framework—Play Hard, Make Crap, Learn Fast—and dives deep into why perfectionism is the enemy of progress.

Whether you’re a self-identified “non-creative,” an overthinking perfectionist, an analytically minded problem-solver, or a leader trying to build more innovative teams, this episode is packed with insight, laughter, and incredibly actionable advice. Bonus content: Melissa was kind enough to create an IMPACT Innovation Checklist for all of our listeners.

Key Takeaways

• Play Hard, Make Crap, Learn Fast – Melissa’s 3-part framework helps people move through creative blocks with intention and joy.
• Everyone is Creative – The belief that creativity is for “others” is one of the biggest blockers to innovation.
• Perfectionism Kills Progress – Creatives often get stuck chasing an unattainable ideal. Melissa advocates for “intentional imperfectionism.”
• Improv Builds Better Teams – Activities like “Time Traveler” help teams build empathy, communicate better, and influence with impact.
• Self-Compassion Fuels Innovation – Letting go of judgment and leaning into curiosity enables us to grow, create, and experiment more freely.

Chapters

• 00:00 – Welcome & Guest Intro
• 00:22 – From Juilliard to Jazz
• 02:24 – The Creativity Myth
• 05:40 – The “Create the Impossible” Framework
• 07:02 – Breaking the “I’m Not Creative” Label
• 11:41 – Improv for Innovation & Communication
• 18:16 – Play Hard, Make Crap, Learn Fast
• 24:03 – Helping Creatives Let Go of Perfectionism
• 27:52 – Mark’s Tile Confession
• 32:40 – Where to Find Melissa & Listener Resources

Resources & Links

• Connect with Melissa Dinwiddle on LinkedIn
• Melissa’s Website and YouTube Channel
• Thank you gift: IMPACT Innovation Checklist

• Connect with Mark on LinkedIn
• Fuzzy Math - B2B & Enterprise UX Design Consultancy

Transcript

Mark Baldino (00:02.552)
Hello and welcome to UX Leadership by Design. I'm Mark Baldino, your host. I'm also a co-founder of Fuzzy Math. Fuzzy Math is the user experience design consultancy that brings consumer-grade UX to business applications for B2B and enterprise tools. And today I had just a pretty fun, joyful conversation with Melissa Dinwiddie. Melissa is a self-described former non-creative turned professional artist who helps tech leaders and teams overcome creative blocks and unleash their innovative potential.

But her whole background is being creative. And that was kind of part of the point of describing yourself as a non-creative. Sometimes we don't see it. Sometimes we are stuck. And we don't see our potential for creativity. And so she walked through her three-step Create the Impossible framework. She talks about some great client examples of how people, you know, how to help people see that they are, that everyone is creative. And then I asked this question, what about people in the creative space? Do they get stuck too?

And we centered on something all creatives run into, which is perfectionism. And as she was explaining her experience of helping people, helping creatives, I realized I was her perfect client. I backed myself into a corner of my own question. And then I put Melissa on the spot to give me some creative arts therapy. The whole conversation is a hoot. It's super fun, but it's actually like super helpful. Her process and framework I think is really helpful for creatives and non-creatives, analytical folks, everybody....who just gets stuck. So please listen, enjoy the conversation and thank you as always for being a listener.

Mark Baldino (00:01.73)
Melissa, welcome to the podcast.

Melissa Dinwiddie (00:04.345)
Thank you, Mark. Thanks for having me.

Mark Baldino (00:06.798)
It is my pleasure. I'm super excited for our conversation. I know you have a super interesting background and kind of how you got to where you are now. I was wondering if you could take the audience through your sort of career journey.

Melissa Dinwiddie (00:22.607)
It is definitely a journey that I have been on, yes. So the nutshell version is that I trained as a dancer at Juilliard. I thought that was going to be my career path, but that got cut short because of an injury. Then I had a short stint as an academic and ended up having a 15-year career as a visual artist and got very burned out as an artist. I had sort of a side career or a night career.

as a jazz singer songwriter, toured a bit doing that and ultimately pivoted to working with teams and organizations, which is what I do now, drawing on what I also spent time doing as a performing improviser, drawing on my tools as a creative, as an improviser and as a performer to help teams and organizations in the area of what I now call the three Cs.

which is the intersection of the three C's is where innovation lies. And the three C's are connection, communication, and creativity. And if you think about it, if any one of those three C's is broken in your organization, then innovation is not gonna be happening. So those three C's is what I come in and I help teams and organizations with. that's my background is as a multifaceted creative. But when I tell people that, what that, you know,

that sort of shiny picture fails to reveal is that I spent a big chunk of my life during that time believing that I was a non-creative person. Yeah, and I get that head tilt from people all the time. I know, right? Yeah.

Mark Baldino (02:06.958)
Huh, what is that? What's that about? Because everything you've said thus far, I'm like, creative, creative, creative, and we started at Juilliard. What was that mean? What was, I don't want to put, is it self doubt or just like you didn't think that your definition of creative was everyone else's? Like what's the gap there?

Melissa Dinwiddie (02:24.271)
Yeah, so a lot of it was I got caught really hard in the comparison trap when I was young. And there was a moment, a really a defining moment that I start my keynote with actually, when I was 13, when I was in a drawing class, and I compared my work with other people's work, I was actually with a bunch of adults. And I got really mired in that fixed mindset. You know, I really thought like,

You know, if you're not born knowing how to draw, then you just aren't good at art. Therefore, that means you're not creative. And so at age 13, I gave up on art. And a couple of years later after that, I gave up on music because I wasn't one of those, you know, genius musician kids. And I thought that if you're not like born knowing how to, you know,

play piano or guitar or violin or whatever, like incredibly well, then you're not a good musician, therefore you're not creative. And I just gave up. And I spent 15 years not making art. Now, during that time I did dive into dance, but I didn't think of myself as creative. I was just a dancer. And then I got injured and I...

I didn't have any other creative outlets at that point. And I dove into academia, which is not known as a bastion of creativity. Yeah. And so when I sort of fell backwards into a career as an artist, which is a long story in itself, but it was the last thing I expected to find myself doing. And it took me a long time to claim the label.

of artist because I thought, well, I'm not an artist. I'm just doing these sort of like artsy craftsy things, but I'm not an artist. So yeah.

Mark Baldino (04:26.047)
What was that inflection point where you started to wear the label more loudly? And do you still find yourself having some of those doubts of like, wait, am I creative or not? Or did you kind of get past that argument?

Melissa Dinwiddie (04:41.751)
I have those doubts all the time. They never go away. mean, that's a big part of my keynote as well, is really, that's what, it's actually what my Create the Impossible framework helps people to do is to continually bust through those limiting beliefs. I call them self-installed glass ceilings, is to recognize them when they appear and know how to continually move through them because

Mark Baldino (04:44.258)
Yeah.

Melissa Dinwiddie (05:11.547)
The power is not in having one breakthrough, but having a tool, a framework that allows you to have breakthrough after breakthrough. And that's what my framework allows you to do, my Create the Impossible framework. And it's deceptively simple because it's three steps. And when you know what the three steps are, then you can constantly be in one of the steps or all three of the steps at all times. You're constantly...

Mark Baldino (05:39.373)
Interesting.

Melissa Dinwiddie (05:40.207)
using those steps all the time to help you identify those limiting beliefs and continually just press against them and break through them. And that's the definition of creativity and innovation is it's not just like, la, la, la, la, I'm creative, I'm innovative. No, actually, creativity and innovation, the process of it is pushing against a challenge, a constraint.

And that the process of pushing against it, that is what unlocks creativity and innovation.

Mark Baldino (06:15.662)
So I want to get back to the three Cs, and maybe this relates to your three-step processing in creating the impossible, but what are some of those glass ceilings, self-imposed glass ceilings that when you're working with corporate clients, you're seeing time and again, what are some common themes in terms of challenges? And then maybe if that leads you into how the three Cs help break it or maybe creating the impossible framework helps break through those, what does that all look like?

Melissa Dinwiddie (06:42.221)
Well, when the limiting beliefs can come in so many different forms, my keynote is very much around innovation and creativity. And so, you know, I talk a lot about, you know, it's really hard to be creative when you think you're not. And a really common limiting belief is, well, I'm not creative. You know, I'm not the creative one. It's the creative team.

They're the creative ones, right? But me over here, I'm the analytical one. I'm in the engineering team or I'm the leadership team or I'm the research team. I'm the UX team. I'm whatever. I'm not the creative team. So therefore I'm not creative. I mean, we have this weird labeling system, right? That has like the creative team over here and everybody else over here. Therefore they're the creatives because they have the label, right? But we're all creative.

But it's hard to be creative when we've got this label that tells us that we're not. That's a limiting belief.

Mark Baldino (07:46.572)
Right, and you're putting yourself in like a, and you're in like a work environment, right? Where maybe you don't think your job is to be creative. Your boss doesn't think their job is to be creative. As you said, it's to run numbers, it's to be analytical, it's to work with spreadsheets, it's to define process flows, it's to maybe write, I don't know, user stories. So you come into organizations, do they, and you're welcome to pitch, like, are they finding you because they're like, hey,

Melissa Dinwiddie (07:57.423)
Yeah.

Mark Baldino (08:14.796)
we don't feel like our team is creative enough, they're not problem solvers, or is it sort of like, we have blocks in general and we need to break through them? What's your ideal client? And then what is a problem that they're kind of to you with? In case there's somebody who's listening who's like, my team has that, or I personally have that.

Melissa Dinwiddie (08:33.24)
Yeah.

Yeah, so often a lot of managers, directors come to me, honestly, because of the communication C. That is one of the big ones that they come to me for. Now, you can't hire me and not get the connection C because that's baked into everything that I do. But the communication C is a big one. Now, I am not the person to bring in if it's like Charlie and Rajiv are having a

Mark Baldino (08:46.19)
Mmm.

Mark Baldino (08:55.468)
Yeah.

Melissa Dinwiddie (09:06.695)
they're having a communication issue, an interpersonal issue, I'm not the person to bring in for that. That's not what I do. But if you've got a research team or an engineering team that's doing amazing work, but they're not getting promoted, they're getting passed over because they're not able to sell what they're doing to the leadership or whatever, that's an area that I can help with.

Mark Baldino (09:06.976)
Sure, interpersonal issues, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're not doing creative arts therapy here? That's not the role. Okay.

Melissa Dinwiddie (09:33.525)
or if they're having these amazing insights, but they're not able to spread those insights throughout the organization, they're not able to communicate for influence and impact, that's a real sweet spot for me. That's where I can come in and really help. So I've done a lot of work, for example, with research teams inside of Facebook, really high level UX researchers who are doing amazing work, but they're really hobbled by...

certain challenges that they have. For example, you know, they come in, they're very highly educated academics, typically, and the way they communicate is they dig in their heels, they argue, and that does not serve them well in the corporate environment where they need to build relationships. And they need to accept, often they're put in like gatekeeper positions. And instead of blocking and dismissing,

other people's ideas that come their way, which does not build them any friends and build them influence across the organization. They need to learn how to accept and build on other people's ideas, validate other people's thinking. That doesn't mean they're going to implement other people's ideas, but in improv parlance, they need to yes and other people's ideas.

Mark Baldino (10:52.174)
Okay. Okay. I'm.

Melissa Dinwiddie (10:53.721)
things like that, those are like muscles that we're building. So for those teams, I did a lot of sort of diplomacy school, helping them learn empathy for their audiences, how to be able to think about how other people's need to hear a message, as opposed to how they are comfortable communicating a message. So, which is a real...

challenging one, so they are used to speaking in researches, which is normal language for them. But for everybody else is like speaking Greek to an English speaker. It just goes over their head.

Mark Baldino (11:25.112)
Yep, 100%.

Mark Baldino (11:34.382)
So what's the solution there? Because that's how they think and you kind of have to rewire their brains, right?

Melissa Dinwiddie (11:41.881)
Totally, you do. So here's an example of the kind of thing that I do. So everything that I do is very experience-based. It's very activity-based. It's very play-based. So I draw from tools from the world of improv and theater. so here's an example. I love sharing this one. It's an activity that I call Time Traveler.

So I'll come in and I can do this in person. I can do this in a Zoom session and I'll divide people up into pairs. Partner A is from the present time. Nothing has changed for them. Partner B is a time traveler from 500 years ago. And so Partner A, we imagine that their cell phone has just gone off.

And their job is in two minutes to explain what this device is, their cell phone. But think about it, before I send them off, have a very brief little chat with everybody in the room about how is life different for the time travelers? It is 1525. And what is day-to-day life like for somebody in 1525? Just think about that.

And we do have a little popcorn, you there's no electricity. They don't have cars. Maybe they ride horses or they walk or, you know, their clothes are really different. The women wear corsets that, know, like we talk about, you know, or maybe maybe they're in the the the land that we live on now. Maybe they're wearing deer skin or I don't know what, you know, like we just like popcorn, how things are different back then. No running water, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right.

Okay, so then before I send them off, I also say, think about it. There's a high likelihood, especially if we're talking about the European continent, that the time travelers are going to think that the present time people, that you're a witch. And so you are also, while you're explaining what this device does, you are also going to have to convince them not to condemn you to burn at the stake for witchcraft.

Mark Baldino (13:51.342)
Mm.

Melissa Dinwiddie (14:02.893)
and you only have two minutes to do this. Now it is an impossible task. have, as if you're like defended on it, right? So it's, I've done this activity myself and often I have to, you know, be even out the numbers and I have to partner up with somebody. It's impossible, but it's hilarious, you know, and there's conversation back and forth. And so after two minutes, I bring people back and I pull the room. How many witches do we have here?

Mark Baldino (14:09.056)
as if your life depended on it.

Melissa Dinwiddie (14:33.369)
half the room invariably raises their hand because it's impossible, right? But then I say, okay, time travelers, did anybody have a partner who did something that was effective? And somebody raises their hand and says, yeah, my partner said something that was always, always, in every case, there was some sort of analogy that they used that the time traveler found effective. So, know, bing.

light bulbs start going off over people's heads and they realize, okay, I to use some sort of an analogy that is, know, find some kind of common ground with my time traveling partner. So then we switch roles, but I give them a different scenario this time. It's not a phone, it's something else, some kind of modern appliance, and they go off and they have to try it again. And this time the present time person has a leg up, so they know, okay, common ground, analogy, da, da, da.

and they have a little bit, you know, it's not 100%, but they have a little bit of a better, you know, better time this time. And we come back and we debrief what worked. And they also learn that what worked with one person probably isn't gonna work with somebody else. So what happens from this experience is, first of all, it's fun, it's creative, it's silly, and because it's so extreme,

Mark Baldino (15:36.739)
Yeah.

Melissa Dinwiddie (16:02.541)
they remember it, it's really sticky. And I get people coming back to me and reporting back, know, I do these programs, it's not just a one-shot thing, it's over a period of weeks. And so we come back and next week I hear back, I was having a conversation with my cross-functional teammate, I was getting really frustrated. And then I remembered the time traveler activity and I realized it's not their problem.

that they couldn't understand me, it's my responsibility. I have to change how I'm talking to them. They figure out an analogy, they figure out what works, and it's like, you know, the sky, the heavens open and, and they have these amazing experiences as a result of that one activity.

Mark Baldino (16:53.454)
That's really, really, it's really interesting and very cool, by the way, and probably pretty fun for people to do in the moment because it feels... I don't know if anybody's gonna describe that as a creative activity, but you're doing fantasy play, you're communicating, you're inventing stories, because it's not part of your job, right? They probably can maybe detach a little bit, enough to learn, and then if it sticks in the back of their brain, they'll kind of remember it. So is that like...

Melissa Dinwiddie (17:15.768)
Yeah.

Mark Baldino (17:22.01)
one part of the three-step process for creating the impossible, or is that just an activity to warm folks up? I'm curious how your actual three-step process works. I assume it solves these similar problems, which is I'm an analytical researcher, and I've got to be convincing people of my ideas or direction for this product or service, and I'm running into a brick wall. Does a three-step process take somebody through how they can break through that barrier?

Melissa Dinwiddie (17:47.801)
So that is an example of one activity of several that are part of my Create the, I'm sorry, my Communicating for Influence program. The Create the Impossible process is, I'll go through that. So that's three steps. so the three steps are, first, play hard. And so that does not mean go to Vegas and get wild.

Mark Baldino (18:14.51)
You

Melissa Dinwiddie (18:16.683)
It means to embrace your inner four-year-old. Basically, it means to be open to experimentation and play, to follow your curiosity. And it just like be in that mind space of being a little kid where we're not trying to impress people or win awards or make money. We're really in that exploration place and, you know, that exploration mindset. So that's what play hard means. in that, and I can talk about like,

let's talk about a specific person who did implement this, learned from that activity that I just shared, the time traveler activity. They played hard when they thought, okay, let's play with different perspectives here. Instead of like digging in their heels and like, I'm gonna argue louder when I'm trying to explain my insight to you. I'm just gonna talk louder.

No, I'm gonna play with different perspectives and see what works. That would be play hard, okay? So step two of the Create the Impossible process is make crap.

Mark Baldino (19:27.01)
Make crap.

Melissa Dinwiddie (19:27.791)
make crap. So and, and, you know, we are all we all learn how to adult. And we all feel like we have to be like everything has to have to be excellent all the time. And that is really a disservice that we are doing to ourselves to our companies to innovation, we have to allow ourselves to make crap, we need the crap to fertilize the good stuff. So this step of making crap is really let yourself

You know, like think about a photographer who has to just shoot a whole ton of photos and not worry about every photo being perfect. If you've ever had photos taken for, you know, an event, a wedding, headshots or whatever, there's gonna be maybe 300 photos, maybe 10 of them are gonna be good, right? You just gotta do a ton of them. So just let yourself, let yourself make rap. And then step three is learn fast. And that means like really,

Mark Baldino (20:20.824)
Yeah, yeah, okay.

Melissa Dinwiddie (20:26.831)
And that's different from move fast and break things. is like really taking every experience, the good, the bad, the ugly, and really gleaning everything that you can from every experience and learning from it and then iterating from it. So I mean, this is not a new concept, but combining it together with play hard, make crap.

and learn fast, it's a continuous cycle that allows you to get past blocks, really.

Mark Baldino (21:04.033)
Yeah, that's what I say. It's kind of like this loop of these three things, as you said, you could be doing them not simultaneously, but maybe, I maybe you're going faster learning and you're creating crap, right? Like you're just kind of like trying to get people through where they get stuck in the process where they're like, I like to say sometimes during times of stress at work for me, I try to white knuckle things, right? I'm trying to control everything. And that always ends up in me.

Melissa Dinwiddie (21:06.99)
It's a loop.

Melissa Dinwiddie (21:11.321)
Yep. Yep.

Melissa Dinwiddie (21:26.563)
Yep. Yeah.

Mark Baldino (21:29.87)
crashing something and it's always a pain. it's like, these are just kind of reminders as you're going through a process to get out of your own way, move forward, work quickly, thoughtfully. I like the idea of like, yeah, you're making crap. There's gonna be a lot of it. Some stuff's gonna stick, some stuff's not, but you gotta learn quick as you said, but you're not, it's not the, it's not break, it's not go fast and break stuff. So, okay. So this is really like a mental framework.

Melissa Dinwiddie (21:52.119)
Yeah, yeah.

Mark Baldino (21:55.372)
that you're sharing with people. And then how do you combine it with like the three Cs? Is this all like one part of a package you're giving folks? Is like, here's two toolkits or they're related or I'm kind of curious how they all work together.

Melissa Dinwiddie (22:05.667)
Yeah, everything's sort of interrelated. you're familiar with the Strengths Finder 2.0, connectedness is my top strength. So in my world, everything is interrelated. So the 3Cs is, again, it's like a framework that I think about in terms of the areas that I help organizations with. And the way that I do it is through my framework, my mental framework, as you say.

Mark Baldino (22:11.81)
Yep. Yep.

Melissa Dinwiddie (22:35.355)
And I can bring in, specifically how I can do that is through keynotes, workshops, retreats, programs. So that's sort of like tactically how I can come in and help. Yeah.

Mark Baldino (22:50.648)
Yeah. And then, so for this, like you mentioned the analytical folks, what's another category of people that you're running into a lot that don't feel like they're creative? And then I want to talk about the flip side of it, which is working with creatives who may be, I don't know, I think a lot of creative people get in their own way. They are perfectionists about their craft and they consider themselves creative. And I'll say this from my personal experience working with the team of designers is like having them

Melissa Dinwiddie (22:54.863)
Mm-hmm.

Melissa Dinwiddie (23:04.238)
Yeah.

Melissa Dinwiddie (23:10.489)
Totally.

Mark Baldino (23:19.598)
know, feel like something's good enough for a client before they put their own name on it and present it. really, really, really hard. So maybe we'll start with the first one. Are there other groups of like categories of people who you feel like the framework and your work really helps kind of enable them to break through?

Melissa Dinwiddie (23:22.328)
Yeah.

Melissa Dinwiddie (23:34.957)
Yeah, I'm really glad you asked about that because, you know, really a universal framework. And, you know, as you probably know, like for marketing purposes, it's like, you know, we want to niche down and reach out to very specific audiences. And so, you know, those analytical folks, they're the ones who identify as

Mark Baldino (23:54.392)
Yeah, sure.

Melissa Dinwiddie (24:03.033)
Well, I'm not creative. It's really useful for them because it really can help unlock that innate creativity and help them tap into that and identify as, wait, yeah, actually, I see how I am creative and start to really own that. And also, just as you said, like, I am a creative and have been a professional creative.

and have struggled with all those things that you just mentioned. And in fact, I developed tools for myself, this book that if you're watching this on video right behind me is my book, The Creative Sandbox Way. I had to develop a set of, I called them at the time rules, I now call them guideposts because most creatives really don't like rules. Right? Right.

Mark Baldino (24:55.054)
Rules? What are rules? There's no rules in creativity.

Melissa Dinwiddie (25:01.327)
I developed 10 guide posts to help myself get out of creative stock. Not because at that time, not because I didn't identify as creative, I was a professional creative, but because I was so mired in perfectionism that I couldn't produce anything unless it was for a client, unless it was on a deadline, unless there was money attached and I was miserable.

getting it to a point where I could release it to the client, as you said, like it had to have a deadline attached. And I was like struggling to not extend the deadline because of the perfectionism. I look back at the work that I created for clients now and think, why did I think that was not good enough? That looks amazing. But at the time it was so, all I could see was how, where the gap between

Mark Baldino (25:51.672)
Yeah. Yeah.

Melissa Dinwiddie (26:00.013)
what was in front of me and the platonic ideal in my head. Now I call that looking through my gremlin glasses. So yes, those, I now embrace the label intentional imperfectionist, which is, intentional imperfectionism is exactly the same thing as self-compassion.

which is really a challenging, it's basically a lifelong sort of practice of releasing perfectionism, which is very hard for those of us who are designers, artists who hold up a standard of excellence for ourselves and our work and really want to create something excellent in the world.

Mark Baldino (26:29.934)
It's it's profound.

Melissa Dinwiddie (26:56.641)
It's very hard to let go of perfectionism because the fear is that you're gonna create something mediocre, that you're going to let yourself go, that nobody wants to do that. But the irony is that when you embrace self-compassion, you actually allow yourself to create better work.

Mark Baldino (27:22.83)
I don't know how we backed into me being your ideal client. It's so funny throughout the course of this conversation. I've been thinking like, I am kind of process. I am analytical, but, and I'm also totally don't consider myself a creative person, but I do a lot of, so we're gonna, I'm gonna put you to work here. I do a lot of work around my house and I've been redoing my bathroom for over a year, but I'm doing it in bits and pieces. And I'm tiling and I decided to do the most complicated herringbone pattern possible.

Melissa Dinwiddie (27:51.417)
Course you did.

Mark Baldino (27:52.214)
I've tiled before. And I refuse to allow a piece of tile to go into my bathroom without it kind of being perfect. And the lack of self-compassion I showed myself during this process, I had to like finish tiling and take like six months off because I was like so frustrated by the process. And even now, I'll be honest, Melissa, I step in because the shower's now all done. I still see like little imperfections and they still bothers me. Like what now? This is why.

Melissa Dinwiddie (28:16.937)
Of course you do. Of course you do.

Mark Baldino (28:20.33)
I'm putting you to work. Like, what is your advice for somebody like me? This isn't even work related, but this is my creative outlet. Like, what do I do?

Melissa Dinwiddie (28:24.751)
Ugh.

Oh, Mark, believe me, I so understand this because we had our kitchen redone back in, I think it was 2017, and there are handles on the cabinets under the sink that were spec'd when we thought that they were gonna open a certain way. And so we had to get handles that were a little bit narrower, shorter.

And, but then we realized that the doors were gonna open a different way. So we could actually, we could have had the handles be a little bit wider. The result of that is that now our kitchen towels that hang on those handles are never able to be fully, know, stretched out. They're always, you know, kind of crinkled up. My husband doesn't care about this at all, but every day I look at that, I'm like, no, we could have had the wider handles.

Mark Baldino (29:20.721)
man.

Mark Baldino (29:25.102)
Yeah.

Melissa Dinwiddie (29:25.677)
You know what, it's a practice of letting go. And so here's what I have done. Your mileage may vary, but I will tell you what I have done and continue to do in order to work on this ongoing lifelong challenge because I am basically a dyed in the wool perfectionist who has now embraced the label of intentional imperfectionist because of that.

I mean, it's a choice that I've made. The reason that I have chosen to practice improvisational forms, methods, art forms, methodologies, like improv, like I doodle as my art form. My visual art is all, the visual art that I do is all improvisational. I was a jazz singer, which is an improvisational musical form.

I like to improvise in like every opportunity that I get, I push myself to improvise rather than doing everything planned out meticulous, which is the art that I did for clients. Everything was excruciatingly planned out, plotted, meticulously designed, which really

Mark Baldino (30:43.278)
Right, right.

Melissa Dinwiddie (30:51.757)
just exacerbated my perfectionist tendencies. So I have had to sort of swing the pendulum in the other direction in order to kind of as an antidote to that. for your bathroom, your tiles, you know, if it were me, what I would do is every time I would look at that, I would just like lovingly embrace like, isn't it wonderful that it's imperfect? Like this is an opportunity for me to

to accept and honor and embrace imperfection. like, how great, like this permanent tile is an opportunity. Like this is what I, instead of looking at my kitchen and thinking, dang it, you know, I could redo those doors and it would be wasteful on the, you know, environment. Like there's no reason for me to redo those doors. could just say like,

Mark Baldino (31:33.166)
No, no, no, no, no.

Melissa Dinwiddie (31:48.853)
Isn't that a great, that's a great opportunity for me to accept that I'm imperfect and forgive myself for being human.

Mark Baldino (31:54.146)
right on. I will thank you. If my partner Kate listens to this, she's gonna love this advice because she's been struggling with my perfectionism in kind of our bathroom redesign project. So that's lovely. Thank you.

Melissa Dinwiddie (32:06.721)
see and here I'm going after my imperfect hair in the...

Mark Baldino (32:09.868)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thanks for indulging me on that. Somehow backed you into being my creative arts therapist on the call. I think this is a great place to wrap. This conversation has been awesome. mean, your background is super interesting. I love that you took us through the three Cs and obviously the Create the Impossible framework, which don't seem scary, which is really, really nice. But also, I think, as you said, they're getting people out, they're getting people unstuck and through barriers. And frankly, a lot of times it's getting people out of their own.

me getting myself out of my own way. you've obviously written a book, you do keynotes, you run workshops, like tell people full set of services, where they can find you, how they can connect with you.

Melissa Dinwiddie (32:40.322)
Absolutely.

Melissa Dinwiddie (32:51.991)
Yeah, you can find out all about what I do, what I offer at my website, melissadenwitty.com, just my name. You can also follow me on LinkedIn. Again, my name, Melissa Denwitty. You can follow me on YouTube. Again, Melissa Denwitty. And you can also follow me on LinkedIn where I share my, they used to be daily, they're not daily anymore, but I do share my spontaneous improvisational abstract artworks, AKA doodles.

at this one breaks the pattern. It's at a underscore creative underscore life. So it's a creative life with underscores in between. And then also I made, I put something together for your podcast listeners. It's a free one page checklist that gives you a quick practical way to unlock fresh ideas and spark innovation fast, especially if you think you're not the creative type.

It's called the Impact Innovation Checklist. And I made a little bit.ly link. It's bit.ly slash uxlbd. Thank you. All over a case, all one word for UX Leadership by Design. Thank you. Uxlbd, thank you. And you do have to put your name and email address in and then answer a little, I think it asks you to.

give a little like review of my appearance here or whatever, but it won't, it actually won't add you to a mailing list or anything. It just will give you the, the, the innovation impact checklist right away.

Mark Baldino (34:28.622)
Fantastic, thank you for doing that. We'll include... yeah, go. look at this! Everybody, this is impressive right here. This is impressive on the fly. Well done, Melissa. I love it. I was going say, so scan that, folks. We'll also include links to all of those URLs when we post this on LinkedIn and YouTube and the like.

Melissa Dinwiddie (34:30.472)
and I have a QR code. So there you go.

Melissa Dinwiddie (34:37.518)
Ha ha ha!

Mark Baldino (34:52.462)
But I just want to say thank you so much for sharing your background and your process. It's literally been personally helpful for me. I will let you know next time I'm looking at the tile if I've been able to embrace a little bit of the, what would you call it? You're calling intentional imperfection? Yeah, okay. I'm going to try to work on it. But honestly, Melissa, thank you so much for your time and energy today. It's much, much, much appreciated.

Melissa Dinwiddie (34:59.014)
good!

Melissa Dinwiddie (35:09.399)
Intentional imperfectionism.

Well.

Melissa Dinwiddie (35:17.569)
Mark, thank you for having me. This has been a lot of fun. And I'm going to be continuing to work on my intentional imperfectionism all the time. And when I look at my little handles in my kitchen.

Mark Baldino (35:28.174)
There you go. All right. Thank you very much for your time.

Melissa Dinwiddie (35:31.417)
Thank you.