We did not just miss the target. We launched ourselves into a different dimension where logic no longer applied.
You know the feeling. The goal is crystal clear on Monday, and somehow by the end of the quarter the whole thing has spiralled into elaborate nonsense. I have lived it, and the post-mortem taught me more than any success.
It started with a simple, honest mission: help customers grow, deliver real insight, create value that fuels their success and ours. Clean. Then came the thought that derails so many good teams.
"Instead of driving action with the insight we already have, what if we spent months building an AI-driven predictive analytics platform that nobody asked for but sounds impressive in a leadership meeting? Something so sophisticated that no one quite understands it. Imagine how it will look. In the future. Possibly."
So instead of solving a problem that existed today, we set about manufacturing value that might exist in some alternate reality. We chased the mirage of future monetisation instead of delivering impact now. We built technology for the sake of technology. We did not make much money, but we certainly spent some. It was like running on a treadmill that was on fire, after someone had cut the power.
The root cause was not laziness or lack of talent. It was the opposite: ambition pointed in the wrong direction. Shiny object syndrome rarely looks reckless from the inside. It feels visionary. It photographs well on a roadmap slide. That is exactly why it is so dangerous.
If I could go back, I would do three things differently, and I now do all three on every engagement:
Because when build and need fall out of alignment, you do not just waste time. You create things that exist only to haunt your roadmap for years, demanding maintenance and attention they never earned.
Start with the customer's problem. Prove value quickly. Resist the impressive thing that nobody asked for. What is the worst case of shiny object syndrome you have watched play out?
