What do you want from your team? Quality? Speed? Both?
Here’s the bad news. You can’t have them both.
I was a policeman stationed at Lalapanzi in the midlands of what was Rhodesia. We were not far from Thornhill Air base where young pilots were learning to fly. In those days Rhodesia had two kinds of ground attack aircraft; one was the Hawker Hunter and the other the de Havilland Vampire. I watched intrigued one late afternoon as a Hunter chased a Vampire, diving down towards where I was standing. The Hunter was getting closer by the second. Suddenly the Vampire flipped over and up. The Hunter went on its diving path before managing to pull up and turn back. The slower Vampire was long gone.
There’s always a trade off somewhere in all that we do. The Hunter had speed but less agility than the Vampire. The Vampire had agility but less speed.
What has brought all this on? I am reading a book, highly recommended to all; “The Hunter gatherers Guide to the 21st Century” by Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein first published in 2021[1] Apart from the amazing insights into the history of human lineage, there is so much more of value to anyone in business today.
“The linking of minds is at the root of humanity’s success. It doesn’t matter how smart an individual is and it doesn’t’ matter how much they know. In nearly every case when minds come together, the whole is greater than sum of its parts”
In the context of business and work; I’ve investigated murders and rapes, road accidents, suicides, housebreakings and more. I learned to prosecute in the Magistrate’s court. I’ve designed and presented training courses and seminars or had other people do it for me; I’ve managed projects, run a payroll bureau, written and published two books. I’m a Coach and a Mentor and an External Quality Assurer. In all these activities quality has always been the essential requirement. In everything that I have ever done well I have needed to work with other people, talk with them, discuss my thoughts, include others’ thoughts, gain insights, get feedback, fix errors, try new approaches.
When I wrote my first book I sent the hard copy manuscript to my friend Howard Dean. He had it for the best part of 3 months. When it came back, I opened the envelope and there was a note: “Dave, you have a gift for storytelling.” Then I looked at the pages. There was at least one red edit mark on every single page. Fortunately I had read the note before I looked at the pages otherwise it would have all gone in the dustbin.
My second book was edited by Tracy Hawthorne in Cape Town. Things had now been digitalised. When the digital draft came back to me there was a suggested edit on every single page. By now I was used to it!
When I researched and wrote my Master’s thesis I had two supervisors, both of whom helped no end for me to do things well and on the day I had to defend my thesis I was brim-full of confidence thanks to them.
In the many investigations I undertook as a policeman there was always two, three or maybe more to review the progress, suggest specific work that could be done to improve the quality of the documents before presenting the docket to a prosecutor.
When I learned to prosecute I learned it all from the Magistrate Peter Henning and then later from John Stainer. Both of them took the time and trouble to help me fix my erring ways.
I could go on but you get the point. Quality takes time and the trade-off is time. ?
I was copied into an email the other day when a manager allocated an evaluation task to a member of his team. It ended with “….this should take you five minutes”
I looked at the evaluation requirements. There were 12 documents and the manager wanted his team member to ‘choose just one or two of them’. I looked at three of the twelve documents. One was one page; the other two were two pages. All three documents were populated with vast amounts of numerical data.
I’m reasonably numerical literate. I thought that if I was being asked to evaluate them in terms of accuracy and presentation and provide a quality decision it would take me not less than 2-3 minutes per document.
I could evaluate all 12 and complete a comparison in 24 minutes and (possibly) do a quality job. I could quick-scan all twelve and do a half job. Or I could just pick two randomly, do the job in 5 minutes and do a less than half job.
In my time as an International EQA when a task came through from a centre requiring my quality services I had to ask my Head Office to allocate me an activity in the IT system. The standard time was a full day if I was doing the activity face-to face and a half day if I was doing it remotely. Head Office didn’t do the work; I did. Doing a Quality Assurance activity remotely was much more difficult, much more time consuming than doing it face-to-face. The centres were in vastly different time zones from mine so the majority of communication was asynchronous. Some centres responded quickly, others didn’t. Some didn’t know how to use the organisation IT system and there was a need for more of my time to help them to learn how to use it. Some were faster learners than others.
It took some time but eventually I managed to persuade Head Office to change the standard.
If you want quality listen to your team and those who do the work. Allow them the freedom to consult others when they need to. Allow them to decide how much time is needed. You may be surprised at how that is both a motivator for quality and the expenditure of reasonable time.
Revenue Accelerator Specialist | Chair, Vistage Guide | President Inpact B2B | Business Owner | CEO | Coaching and Connecting Leaders to Achieve More
1 周This so true and so evident but so many companies still expect quality and speed from employees.