Today's Life Lessons
No cover up for mistakes
BUSINESS MATTERS (BEYOND THE BOTTOM LINE) By Francis J. Kong
Imagine yourself in this situation:
You work hard on a project. You must have spent a hundred hours
trying to finish the job. Your report will be reviewed by the board of
directors and that’s why you know you better do a good job.
You drink your coffee and you burn the midnight oil. Struggling
somewhere halfway between sleep and wakefulness your mind begins to
drift. You think of the many sacrifices you have offered just to make
this project right. And now that you’re 90 percent through you discover a
tiny little mistake. An error that will most likely escape unnoticed.
Redoing the whole thing means starting from scratch and you know
you’re only a few steps away from completion. So what would you do?
Would you start from the very beginning? Correct the error or would you
try to look for the easiest way out?
Consider this: there’s a story going around that involves a carpet
layer who had worked all day installing wall-to-wall carpeting. When he
noticed a lump on the carpet in the middle of the living room, he felt
his shirt pocket for his cigarettes and they were gone. He was not about
to take up the carpet, so he went outside for a two-by-four. Tamping
down the cigarettes with it would be easy. Once the lump was smoothed,
the man gathered up his tools and carried them to the truck. Then two
things happened simultaneously. He saw his cigarettes on the seat of the
truck, and over his shoulder he heard the voice of the woman to whom
the carpet belonged, “Have you seen anything of my lovebird?” she asked
sorrowfully.
One thing I notice with high achievers is that they will never leave
their work until they get everything right.
What distinguishes an
excellent work from a mediocre one is one’s diligence to details.
A lot of people do not know this. The reason why one piece of garment
sells more and can command a higher price may not be as monumental as
the difference between the fabric’s quality. Neither is it as dramatic
as the kind of fit nor its washing treatment. Most often, with all
things being equal, the piece that catches your eye is its attention to
detail. Perhaps the buttons used were just the right size. Perhaps the
tension of the thread used on the garment made the difference. Perhaps
the packaging is better and more visually appealing when seen on the
shelf. Details spell the difference.
Professional speakers are fond of using this material. It’s an old
one and maybe the figures are a little out of date but it still delivers
the message powerfully. Suppose you settle for something that is 99
percent good, what would the results be?
If 99.9 percent is good enough then...
12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily
114,500 mismatched pairs of shoes will be shipped in a year
18,322 pieces of mail will be mishandled per hour
2,000,000 documents will be lost by the IRS
2.5 million books will be shipped with the wrong covers
Two planes landing at Chicago’s O’Hare airport will be unsafe every day
315 entries in Webster’s Dictionary will be misspelled
20,000 incorrect drug prescriptions will be written
880,000 credit cards in circulation will turn out to have incorrect cardholder information on their magnetic strips
103,260 income tax returns will be processed incorrectly
5.5 million cases of soft drinks produced will be flat
291 pacemaker operations will be performed incorrectly
3056 copies of tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal will be missing one of the three sections
A typical day would be 24 hours long (give or take 86.4 seconds)
Shoot for one hundred percent. Pay special attention to detail.
Tolerating a little error is risky. Maybe that one percent error just
might escalate into a major problem that may cause your business to
fail.
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