Quality Starts With You and Me
As a dad and as a leader, I care about passing down and exemplifying quality to my kids and to my team. I want them to respond with quality – in the way they respond to others, in the way they produce, and in their general mindset as they go about their work and daily activities.
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. Cody is our 10 week old seeing eye puppy. He keeps us on our toes with his puppy teeth and puppy energy. Isaac, our son, is responsible for taking care of Cody which leaves our daughter, Hannah, to handle Iso. 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 Hannah takes Iso out, she’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 Hannah doesn’t have to mess with it later.
But what happens when her “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 Hannah more to make sure she’s doing her jobs correctly. This isn’t fun for Hannah or for mom and dad. Inevitably, Hannah has to spend more time cleaning up the yard, because she 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. [Click to Tweet]
As I ponder quality today, it may seem like I’m picking on my daughter. 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?