When should you sacrifice quality for consistency? Or should you at all?
I have a dilemma. It is Tuesday and for the first time in 7 weeks I do not have an episode of The Entrepreneur Road Show ready to air today.
Although I have plenty of content from filming my travels across the east coast I don’t believe I could edit and make a high quality video by the end of today. But instead of not posting anything I decided that my dilemma made for an interesting topic that applies not only to my video show but to all aspects of business.
Being consistent in everything you do is an important part of running a successful business. At the same time, it is also always important to provide quality products, services, and support in all aspects of your business.
Can a company be successful with one but not the other? Should an entrepreneur focus on consistency but not quality, or quality but not consistency? Or should an entrepreneur always strive to run their business with consistent quality?
Although The Entrepreneur Road Show is just something I do for fun, and is by no means my business, deciding not to make a haphazard, low quality video, has made me think of the importance of consistency and quality in how I run my company, Sand Shack, on a daily basis. I realize that today although I may be sacrificing the consistent nature of airing The Entrepreneur Road Show every Tuesday, which my viewers have come to expect, I am preserving the quality of the show and the brand I am creating around it.
So I guess in not posting the video show today I am saying that quality trumps consistency, however, it is best if they coincide. Do you agree?
Consider reading Entrepreneur Tip – Always Focus on Quality Customer Service No Matter Your Size for further reading on ‘quality’.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I think it’s about finding a balance between the two in your business and blogging as well.
Although I think quality is premium, I would prefer reading a consistent blogger’s content than a ‘once-in-a-blue-moon’ blogger. I like this blog because it is consistent in posting and quality. However, if you changed it erratically for no reason, it would be hard to follow the blog because it breaks the pattern.
Thanks for the comment aulelia!
Yea, finding a balance is the most important part of it all I would say. Consistent quality is the answer.
Even though I was looking forwad to that episode (and I was a little bit disappointed), I will forgive you
because I like your blog. I agree with aulelia that an 70% post is way better than no post. We come here not for super high quality evey day. We just want to watch you being an entrepreneur. You create the quality with what you do during your entrepreneur-day, that up here. Furthermore for me the content delives only 75% of my experience of your blog the other 25% are your entertaining style. I can imagine that you want to get better evey day or every week so you higher your expectations of yourself so you may assume that content X or Y is not good enough for a video, BUT somewhere, someone will benefit from it. There’s always someone gaining something from it. Everything that is about you and business or both is appropiate. Don’t hesitate mate.
Jens, haha. well thank you so much for your encouragement. Keeping up with my blog while running my full time business is not easy, so I really appreciate all that you have said to encourage me and make me realize what people truly come here for…the overall experience of being an entrepreneur.
And I am so sorry to disappoint you by not having a video!!! Don’t worry, next Tuesday there will be one here waiting for you!
Cheers,
Brian
An aside to this quality/consistency discussion – here’s a good example from the customer service industry.
I work as a consultant dealing mostly with customer service strategy to large fortune 500 companies. We can look at a simple example of the front lines of the customer experience – the call center. What we strive for there is often consistency in concert with quality: consistency is often determined by employing technology that works and uniformity in how agents solve problems & deal with customer concerns (process consistency). Quality service often comes out of quality processes – I would rather see 10 customer service reps deliver standard and consistent customer support in line with process than 5 stellar customer service reps who deliver unique and above average support (but deviate from process) and 5 sub-standard agents who deliver poor support (also most likely a process deviation). Food for thought
@Patrick – interesting to see how you would rather see 10 customer service reps deliver standard and consistent service than 5 who deliver outstanding quality service – I suppose that is because the other 5 would then be deliver inconsistent, poor quality service. So what we see from you is that consistency, in some cases, trumps quality. Interesting.