Studying business and thought leaders for any length of time, one is bound to notice a few key common traits among those who succeed…and those who don’t. One of the more glaring contradictions between the two groups is the idea of quality over quantity.
The all the saying goes: “quality over quantity”, but what does that mean for businesses looking to run an agile and innovative ship? Unfortunately, for many it means spending many hours attempting to perfect products, services, marketing materials, etc. rather than rapidly prototyping in order to find what their market really wants. The idea of quality has is somehow gotten confused with the idea of perfection.
Conversely, some companies spend at no time thinking through their actions before making them. Yes, we do want to act quickly and be adaptable in an ever -changing economy. But quantity cannot sacrifice your company’s image.
The perfect formula of a quality and quantity may require a bit of trial and error, but it is the only way to truly conquer your something. The truth is, as much as 50% of the work your organization does may not be seen by anyone but you. A portion of what you create –whether it be products, services, marketing materials, or simple blog posts – may not be any good.
The best idea that any leader can have up for the growth of their organization, is the idea of “good enough.” Good enough does not mean rushing through testing and production when you know a product or any other material related to your business is below standard. What it means is being able to quickly decide and execute actions that are within company values, and good enough for basic production in order to test.
This will eliminate two things: the long and laborious task of creating “perfect” things that end up costing the company money and not being interesting to the market and the grave mistake of putting out content or products that undermine the public view of your organization.
In order to be able to work quickly and produce quality, you must have systems of decision-making in place that allow you and your entire team to know what they can and cannot do within the values of the company. Without such a system, employees will be stuck asking managers for direction, managers will be stuck asking leaders how to respond, and leaders will be stuck wading through red tape before getting back to them. The process will be bottlenecked, slow, and frustrating!
Getting such systems in place will allow your organization to not only innovate once, but to become the agile, adaptable, and innovative culture that people love on an ongoing and easily-repeatable basis. Do you have such a system in place?
