Clear sight of end goal : A learning

It's sad if you have to learn from your own mistakes. But it's also good that this learning goes a long long way. Let me talk about about one such recent happening.

Competition, stiff targets, meeting goals, we keep hearing these things all the while in the corporate world. People scramble to meet deadlines, individual goals, etc etc. However, I recently realized we tend to lose sight of what is it that we, as a team, want to achieve as the end goal. Understood it's good if everyone focuses on his activities diligently and tries to bring the best out of it, but then one should not lose focus of the end goal of the team and the organization as a whole.

In these rat races of getting more and more, we tend to compromise on the quality. For example, when it comes to innovation, we should understand very clearly that, apart from building ones individual profile, how does an innovation help the organization? We should think beyond our individual benefits. Does the company gets benefited if I get an engineering award but the idea never gets used thereafter? Or, let's say I present a great looking idea, which however is too difficult to implement in a product given to other constraints? We should always consider the end use of whatever Idea we come up with, and analyse carefully if it would make any contribution to the organization as a whole.

As a general side note, our investment in looking what's good for the company will actually come back to us as returns in the longer run. We might find it cool to keep innovating fast and more (read reinventing a slightly better wheel which may never get into the car...) and keep meeting targets n all, but this may prove to hamper our efficiency later on, which eventually means lesser profits to the company, and ultimately lesser growth opportunities in a market that's driven by efficiency today. On the other hand, if we just work towards routine business activities, and in due course get a really good Idea, evaluate it thoroughly if it makes business sense, and then execute upon it, I feel this will pay better returns, even if it means we cannot meet those innovation targets (read numbers...).

In the end, I feel as far as innovation is concerned, what matters most is the quality and not quantity. Of course we always get to learn no matter we gain or lose, but it'd be better if we contemplate and have a clear sight of where we head as a company, for each and every action we take, whether it's a business decision or innovation.

P.S. As learning is a continuous process, the above reflects my state off mind today, and it's very likely that a different learning can change these thoughts, in a different direction.