Can perfection be matched to ‘meeting deadlines’?

Today was a day packed with learning and realising. Today in office, we had to listen to all the criticisms made on us for not meeting the deadline or as our PM mentioned “miserably missing the deadline”. The question in the afternoon’s meeting was “why wasn’t our part completed in the given time frame?” There were criticisms made on everybody and I was last to be left out. Although there were so many things I could learn from our seniors, it also brought out some intriguing questions in me.

First of those questions is that What is expected on a deadline? It is easy for anyone working in a software firm to understand that a job when it is submitted for the first time is not without any errors or bugs as we call them. It is after rigorous testing and rework, the system becomes stable. From the very little experience I have, I can state that this is true not only in the case of software but also in the case of any field. So probably on the first built (job completion), the job is expected to have some errors.

Second of these questions is that Is finishing a job more important than doing it with satisfaction? Well I would say that satisfaction should come first.

Third question is why wasn’t I able to complete my job? Well a lot of reasons follow. First, I had tough time with my priorities during the initial stages of our project because of my GMAT. Then I had troubles with my piece of mind continuously being disturbed by an estranged relationship of mine. The above two being personal ideally should not have affected my work. I tried not to. I worked late nights, came early in the mornings, came during weekends, but still things didn’t work. Probably, one mistake I made was not having a firm deadline in my mind and working towards it.

Some of my earlier experience had taught me that it is not deadline but it is the perfection that matters. Probably it is these experiences that taught me that I should not deliver anything without ensuring the quality myself. Ensuring quality myself means the satisfaction of a finished job. The problem that happened was that I could not let the job go off my hands when I knew that there were some things in the job to be fixed. Had I been under the impression that “of course, these things could be fixed sometime latter also”, probably I could have met the deadlines. This is what brings me to the whole point of writing this blog late in the night. Can perfection be matched to meeting deadlines?

The answer is YES. And those who do are the most successful ones on earth. For instance, Kishore Biyani and a group of men involved in making of the first Big Bazzar outlet in kolkatta had a tough time in opening the shop 10 days prior to the Durga puja, which is the most celebrated festival out there. For a couple of weeks, they had to spend 24x7 on the shop floor to ensure that the things were done at the right time. And as far as the perfection is concerned, it was embedded in the planning itself. They could match perfection with the right timing(deadline) and that scripted the success story of Big Bazzar.

One thing I learned today is that the challenge of meeting deadlines does not lie in completing a job, but in doing it with utmost perfection in the given time frame.