Quality

IN THE BOX PODCAST

Episode 55: Delegating Work, Managing In A Hierarchy, And Becoming Objective And More (Podcast)

Garth Beyer

On this episode of In The Box Podcast we discussed how to get a workaholic to delegate their work, how to manage a friendship with your superior at work, one way to reduce your spending, if quantity of experiences trumps a quality experience and if it’s possible for one to be objective about a situation they are in. Enjoy.

Episode 55: Delegating Work, Managing In A Hierarchy, And Becoming Objective

Quantity vs quality – When it comes to experience, it seems more experience is valued more than a single quality experience. Do you get that vibe? Why?

Delegate – How do you get someone to delegate their work instead of taking it all on themselves?

Hierarchy – How do you manage someone at work being your superior but not treat them as superior to you as a human?

Budget – What is one place in your budget you can quickly reduce your spending?

Bonus – One suggestion you have for someone trying to be objective about a decision?

 

Stay Positive & Listen On

You Can Always Come Back And Do More

Garth Beyer

When it comes to quality versus quantity, you can always come back and do more.

If your form sucks while working out, you’ll either be exhausted or injured before you think of upping the quantity of reps.

If your writing has to go through four rounds of edits before it’s good enough to put out there, your editor will be done with you before you get through half the chapters in your book.

If your deck presentation is putting your audience to sleep in the first few slides, what are the chances of them caring what you have to say by the time you get to slide 35?

It’s reassuring to me that nothing is stopping me from coming back and presenting a few more lifts, a few more words, a few more slides. In fact, people want you to when they see you’ve put quality first.

 

Stay Positive & Quality Not Over Quantity, Just Before It

What Is Efficiency Anyway?

Garth Beyer

When you say you’ve done a lot, do you also say how well you did it? Likely didn’t think about it.

On the flip side, when you’ve done something really awesome, borderline remarkable, you’re sure to say just how long it took you.

In the game of making things better, we swap quality out with speed. We call ourselves efficient in terms of how much we get done instead of looking at the quality of our work. Speed instead of quality.

Speed is an objective community perception, easily recognizable and measured.

Quality, though, is more subjective. Quality can be compared with what everyone in the agency has made or it can be compared with your personal average. A bit more hard to measure.

In the marketing world, we have enough of the pace-type efficiency. We’ve spent years mastering it, creating charts, laying out entire office cultures based on it. In terms of speed, I’d say we’re near maximum efficiency.

Now that capacity has been met, we have an opportunity to redefine efficiency and pursue filling the void we’ve ignored all these years. We can stop trying to check more boxes and start starring them because we’ve done work that matters, work that’s special.

Being forward, it’s hard to create remarkable work (art) because it’s easier to see ourselves working faster, checking more boxes, getting to more meetings than it is to image ourselves making something remarkable.

To do so, we have to think differently, talk differently, and start seeing things differently.

The neat thing about remarkable work is it’s rooted in the saying, “we’re doing X, but just a bit differently.” No need to invent a new wheel, just think differently about the one you’re using. Only then can you begin giving meaning to the term “efficiency” again. And for that, thank you.

 

Stay Positive & A Little Different Can Go A Long Way

If Quality Is A Given, Where Does That Leave Us?

If Quality Is A Given, Where Does That Leave Us?

Garth Beyer

Bike Design Quality

It’s harder to differentiate our product or service by saying “we’re better than this other product because our product is bigger/stronger/smaller/faster/etc,.”

Now different styles of a phone are parallel in terms of quality.

We’ve come to realize the facts that a bike with thin tires isn’t too different from a bike with fat tires. Both get you to where you want to go. One tire is a half-inch wide and the other is two inches wide. Neither makes one much better than the other… except in the story they are telling the customer.

If quality is a given, we’re left with the story the product or service tells.

In the past, good design meant better quality. Now good design is about telling a story. It’s that story that stops potential consumers from even thinking about your competition.

 

Stay Positive & What Does Your Design Say?

Photo credit

Good Enough Or Perfection Fallout

Garth Beyer

If you haven’t heard of the term “satisficing,” then it’s time to listen closely. It’s much like “good enough” if you define that as “Good. Now, enough.”

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There are two sides to satisficing.The first is on you, the content creator. Perfection with your product or service might be able to be accomplished from time-to-time, but not consistently and it’s not what your clients or customers want. Understanding your audience is the second side of satisficing.

Herbert Simon who coined the term “satisficing” maintained that “individuals do not seek to maximise their benefit from a particular course of action (since they cannot assimilate and digest all the information that would be needed to do such a thing). Not only can they not get access to all the information required, but even if they could, their minds would be unable to process it properly.”

In laymen’s terms, even if people notice perfection, they have difficulty interacting with it. Most of the time though, they don’t notice perfection. This leads to a series of questions you need to ask yourself.

  • Why spend time on creating perfection?
  • What does my audience expect?
  • What is the most my audience can or is willing to process?
  • Can I create more by satisficing than I can creating perfection? (obv.)

Two extra bits about this:

1. Having an idea (not a goal!) of what perfection is at the beginning of a project puts you in a great position to start working. Beware, you will end up hairless trying to follow all the way through with that idea. (Either it will take so long to reach that you bald or you pull all of your hair out trying to make it perfect.)

2. Acknowledge the Juggler’s Perfection. The businesses and freelancers who make the most are those who create something that’s imperfect, perfectly.

 

Stay Positive & Don’t Fall Out Of The Running By Trying For Perfection

Garth E. Beyer

Photo credit

The Sweat Of Perfection

Garth Beyer

No. This isn’t about working hard. It has nothing to do with perfect practice making perfect. It actually has nothing to do with quality. It does, however, have everything to do with fear, effort, and vulnerability.

Edward R. Murrow called stage fright ‘the sweat of perfection.’

What Murrow was implying is that getting yourself up there, just doing it, trying, testing, shipping, making yourself vulnerable, opening yourself to criticism, sharing what you have created is what makes perfection.

You can build a myriad of matryoshka dolls but they will never be perfect unless you share them, because that’s what creating is really about.

Perfection is a state of completeness and nothing is complete until it’s given away.

 

Stay Positive & Perspire Perfection

Garth E. Beyer

Be In It For The Long-Run: Product Longevity

Garth Beyer

You are the only one who wants instant benefits.

Everyone else is investing in long term results.

Quality has devoured quantity. Customers, employers, investors, marketers – they all expect the quality to last. That is what they are after.

Let’s look at the product life cycle and Mac’s for instance. Jef Raskin began by focusing on the market introduction and growth state, but it was Steve Jobs who maintained these two stages at the same time as the maturity stage of Apple which allowed them to continuously keep the lead. Their survival was the function of disciplined attention to brand identity and equity. While that was the marketing aspect, many fail to realize the product longevity attitude that was put into Mac’s. They were made to be in it for the long-run. The greatest selling point a product could have – longevity.

Convenience was the heart of the largest product sales, until it became standard in every sale of the product. Nothing will profit without convenience to the consumer. Now that there is no longer a competition of who is more convenient, it is a matter of what product will last the longest.

Neil Kokemuller of Demand Media says that, “Although predicting specific longevity of a product life cycle is impossible, businesses want a general idea of the expected length of the life cycle for optimized production and marketing planning. Technology life cycles tend to unfold fairly quickly as competition intensifies and technology evolves. Missing the timing of a prime market opportunity can mean your product fails in the market. Additionally, marketers and salespeople need to know whether they are promoting a stable, consistent and reputable brand with a longer life, or a new and improved, or cutting-edge product.”

 

The Dexterity Of “Product” Longevity – It’s Universal

Bloggers who receive the most views, are creating posts that can be read with even a larger impact 1-3 years from now.

Investors don’t care about the start-up price, they care about consistency in equity over the next 10 years.

Business’s cannot even start-up without the stability to last for 5+ years, and that number is steadily increasing.

Even the underrated occupations are falling victim to the rising standards of consumers.

Painters are being asked how long the paint job will last and people will pay more for the number of years.

Personal Fitness Trainers are expected to teach clients the lessons necessary to keep the body they want.

 

What other scenarios can you think of?

 

Stay Positive and Haul Long

Garth E. Beyer