Quality – Starts With Me
Quality Week on The Stretched Blog continues with this 3rd post. Go check out the past two days of discussion if you need to catch up. You can catch up my clicking here or here.
As a dad and as a leader, I care about passing down and exemplifying quality to me kids and to me team. I want them to respond with quality.
Unfortunately, I don’t always get it right at work or at home and neither do my kids or the members of my team.
I think it’s important to understand the benefits of doing things with quality and to recognize the downside of allowing our performance to be less than stellar.
You may know that our family currently has two dogs. Iso is our forever doe. He’s a lovable eight year old black lab who loves to lay around and sleep. Irwin is our 17 week old seeing eye puppy. He keeps us on our toes with his puppy teeth and puppy energy. Hannah, our daughter, is responsible for taking care of Irwin which leaves our son, Isaac, to handle Iso. (Are you confused with all the “I” names?) Part of caring for Iso involves taking him outside and cleaning up the dog poop. It’s not a glamorous job, but you can understand that it’s essential.
When Isaac takes Iso out, he’s supposed to clean up after the dog right away. Obviously, there are major benefits to performing this task with quality. The yard is clear of “landmines” and Isaac doesn’t have to mess with it later.
But what happens when his “job” performance lacks quality? We end up with dog poop in the yard. Someone steps in it and gets it in their shoes. Then they track it in the house which leads to lots of extra cleanup and wasted time. It also means that we have to be on Isaac more to make sure he’s doing his jobs correctly. This isn’t fun for Isaac or for mom and dad. Inevitably, Isaac has to spend more time cleaning up the yard, because he didn’t do it right the first time.
Suddenly, the lesson in quality starts to make more sense. When it comes to quality, we want to do it right because we do it right – not because we do it twice.
As I ponder quality today, it may seem like I’m picking on my son. This isn’t my intent. These thoughts are a reminder to me that I must act with quality first – especially if I expect my team and my kids to make quality a priority.
And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Colossians 3:17
How have you been positively or negatively impacted by your attention or lack of attention to quality? If you are a leader, how do you demonstrate the importance of quality to your team?