3 Reasons You Need to Focus Your Startup On Quality

The classic novel, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” by Robert Pirsig, Goes through an incredible amount of twists and turns to reflect on the idea of “quality” as a metaphysical force that gives life a lot of its meaning.

In the book, this idea of “quality” is linked to the state of harmony and natural rhythm that the Tao Te Ching refers to as “the Tao.”

During the course of our everyday lives, we often let “quality” slip in small ways. Here’s why you need to take the idea of quality deadly seriously in your work, in particular.

It forces you into a position of total accountability.

As human beings, we all tend to be pretty good at making excuses given half a chance. Cognitive dissonance is a real phenomenon, and it’s always easier to explain away some underperformance by blaming someone or something else for it.

When you get obsessively focused on providing the highest-quality product, service, and outcome at any given time, however, you essentially force yourself into a position of total accountability – both to yourself, and to your customers.

When you fail to hit the mark, you will know it, and you will have to admit that is because you didn’t do everything you could have done. This awareness will then motivate you to stay on track and turn down opportunities to cut corners.

It stops you from unravelling at your weakest link.

In practice, focusing on quality in your business generally means paying really close attention to the “small stuff” that other people might overlook.

For example, actually caring that the finish on your product isn’t the exact color or texture that you’d ideally want it to be. Or, more seriously, paying attention to the fact that there is a heat-sensitivity issue in some element of your businesses infrastructure that could benefit from Heat-Line heat trace technology.

When individuals and businesses unravel, they typically unravel from their weakest links. If you’re always watching your weakest links like a hawk, you reduce the odds of this happening to you.

People are done with hollow marketing speak.

In recent years, especially, there’s been a huge push among consumers at large to demand a higher degree of authenticity and attention to detail in the products and services they buy and utilize. The standards of even just a few years ago are now often considered insufficient.

Today, you’ll find a lot of people who care deeply about the “artisanship” or “craftsmanship” of a product or service, and who aren’t happy with hearing the same hollow marketing speak that they’ve been hearing all their lives.

By focusing on quality, first and foremost, you position yourself to provide the authoritative results that people are increasingly after. And this can set you apart from your competition in a big way.

This is a contributed post.