This is Alpha, the first-born, when he was 2YO.
This is Beta, the second-born, when he was about 2YO.
This is Gamma, the third-born, when he was about 18MO.
Management Choices
Oct
10
2008
In the business world, there is an old saying that there are three options for whatever you’re buying: price, quality, or speed – and you can choose only two.
A good example of this has been any retail item. You can buy a certain item at a retail store, and you have chosen speed and quality. You can buy the same item from a mail order or internet retailer and have it shipped to you, and you have chosen quality and price. The store item is available immediately but for a higher price than the mailed item. The mailed item will take a couple of days for shipping but will cost less.
The same concept applies to any business program, in particular regarding employees working on a project. If a project needs to be done quickly, you’ll have to pay more by either paying employees overtime or hiring more people. If it needs to be done quickly but you don’t pay more, then people will cut corners and do only certain items, sacrificing quality. And if the project needs to have high quality and low price, then it will take a long time.
There are some articles that indicate that by improving quality, or by improving speed, you can reduce costs. That is true, but it is true for a long-range purpose not individual projects. Let’s say you bid on a project and you say that it will cost X and take two weeks to complete. If the customer says that two weeks isn’t fast enough and he wants one week, you’re not going to be able to improve your processes enough to meet that demand. What those other articles are talking about is long-term process improvement such that your initial quotes are improving. But if you quote something accurately, changing one part of the “quality-speed-cost triangle” will affect one or both of the other parts.
If you are a manager, please pay attention to that concept. Don’t demand immediate results from too few employees and then be surprised if problems appear later because of poor quality.
“each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work.”
– 1 Corinthians 3:13
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October 11th, 2008 at 7:59 am
Looks like you’ve had some personal experience regarding this!
October 11th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Back to the retail, I think you wife finds quite a few that fit all three (price, speed, quality) when she goes shopping.
October 11th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
Bad day at work?
October 11th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
I have no recollection of that.