If we don’t succeed at first—given the impatience we’ve all developed as we multitask, and a 24/7 news cycle that creates a need-to-know-now mentality—it’s easier to give up than to try and try again. But sometimes we don’t have the luxury of moving on to the next thing, and that can be a good thing.
The recent battery misfortunes of Boeing’s new 787 Nightmareliners provide a good example of innovation being forced on an organization for the public good.
Before Boeing got the OK from the FAA to put the 787s back into service after being grounded, the company twice told the feds that they had the problem solved, yet the government agency sent the company back to the drawing board, saying that the problem was not adequately resolved.
Try, try, and on the third round, Boeing came up with the best solution—better than the previous two, which should be a relief to anybody contemplating a trip on the jumbo jet. Yet the company wouldn’t have necessarily come up with the best solution unless it kept trying. In this case, it was forced to keep trying.
How often are we settling for good enough instead of continuing to work toward the best? What are we sacrificing in the name of speed versus quality?
When you’re developing ideas, don’t allocate an hour or two to brainstorming. Your best ideas are going to come after you’ve already found what you think to be the best idea. Boeing’s initial engineering idea of using lighter lithium-ion batteries, which have better energy density, among other attributes, was a good one, but we all saw (much to the horror of Boeing shareholders) what happened to the idea. There was a better solution. And I’m not saying that Boeing didn’t jump through all the regulatory hoops to make sure that it’s plane passed every test, which it did.
As we’ve seen in many industries when accidents occur and standards are changed in response, there will be new requirements designed to safeguard the public—but shouldn’t we be trying to create the best, versus good enough, from the outset?
Cheaper is often very expensive.
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