Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

In the area of business we all have to make endless decisions that entail speed and excellence.

The strength of speed is that it propels you into action - and action creates a momentum that gets you going toward the goal.

With excellence you can produce something that is superior than anyone else is producing in your field. This can propel you ahead of your competitors.

As a manager, through trial and error, you must learn to balance the two. Obviously, not every product and service operates at the same speed or excellence. Offering a simple but important service can be launched quickly and be successful by having an attitude of service and quality within the workers involved. They can adapt and adjust to customer feedback, and quickly get a market edge.

On the other hand, if you simply put out some product or service quickly, and it is very mediocre, it won't be long before your customers abandon it for a competitor's superior offering.

How do you measure all of this? Here are a couple of thoughts:

A good product in a customer's hands is better than a perfect product sitting in the workshop. If you get a good product in a customer's hands, you can than be committed to improving upon it quickly. Even if a product is superior to yours, it can't sell if it isn't ready. And by time it's ready you will have improved upon yours and customers are committed while the distance of quality between your product and the competitors is not that significant to make the customer change.

Now if your product or service is in a luxury or or 'rewarding yourself' market, to me it's worth the effort to take a little more time to make it worth the customer's delight.

For instance, if you want to reward yourself with some high quality ice cream as a special treat. You don't mind at all paying the extra price. But to partake in it and be provided with a product that is no better than a lower-priced competitor is to be cheated in the consumer's mind. So it is better to take extra time to produce this type of product.

There is no one answer to all of this. The key thing is to understand with every indiviual product or service, whether speed is the determining factor or quality. The answer will give you a map to how you go about producing and marketing it.