Before this crazy economy plunges us all into a bottom-line business mentality, let’s pause to think about what really matters most to us and make it a priority. This may be the secret to becoming a more innovative organization.

Tim Brown, President of IDEO, a world renowned design company for products, services and experiences, offers this insight in a recent McKinsey Quarterly: “Time and time again, I hear people say that putting something out in the world that didn’t exist before was a life-changing experience. This means that if you want to be an effective innovation organization, to motivate your people as innovators, you’ve got to be prepared to measure yourself by the impact you have on the world—not just your sales or your margins, which are important, of course.”

Brown then offers an interesting innovation IDEO is using for personal and corporate goals that drive high-performing organizations. Individual employees have a personal portfolio on the company’s knowledge sharing platform where they can describe the impact of their work on colleagues, teams or the outside world. Teams also are encouraged to evaluate the impact of their work, and the company is now trying to measure its impact on the domains it cares about, such as education, sustainability and healthcare.

Those who have thought deeply about how communities, companies and organizations can escape slow growth and failure look to innovation for the answer. Brown says this innovation should be focused on doing something worthy of your highest aspirations. He believes your business will be more effective if you do this.

Signature i agrees. You will certainly be doing the most important work in the best possible way. This focus alone should help you abandon the meaningless and often wasteful work that builds up over time in organizations that have little need to examine what they are doing.

Now is not the time for a single-minded focus on the business bottom-line. To transform your organization and this economy, it is time for a big-hearted understanding of work that inspires people to create their new personal bests in the world.