What is YOUR Job #1?

Remember the old Ford media campaign about "Quality is Job 1?"  Ford ran that when times were the toughest for the American Auto Industry and it seemed to work.  Maybe you should think right now (since times still aren't so great) about how you are viewing quality in everything you do.

When I was VP of Sales for a large flooring distributor we had a banner hanging across our customer service area that read: "If you don't have the time to do the job right currently, where will you find the time to redo it and correct your mistakes?"  I loved that banner and just seeing it boldly on the wall our customer service folks lowered their mistake level significantly. 

I currently involved in bringing a new product to market for USG.  Everyone on the team wanted this new product to be introduced by early LAST spring - didn't happen.  By Mid-year - didn't happen!  Why? Because we all care about quality, and without meeting the quality standards that we set for this product during our planning of the product we just don't feel we want to bring it out until it is right.  I my opinion, it is far worse to delay an introduction than it is to introduce a product and then have to pull it off the market and rework it and then try to again convince those same customers that THIS TIME we've gotten it right!!

Yes it does take a little more time, and a lot more effort, to comply with your stated goals and standards, whether they are for Quality or anything else, but in the long term relationship of supplier/customer I believe it pays huge dividends to do it correctly the first time.

On my computer monitor, right on top of my list of activities that are shown, is the warning "KEEP THE MAIN THING AS THE MAIN THING!" under that I have another list of: CHOICES, INFLUENCES, HABITS, QUESTIONS.  Those 4 items help me to focus on the important items for my role.  Nothing original, but necessary for me to insure that I keep my #1 job as my #1 job every day. 

One final hint, under the QUESTIONS headline I have the old standby of: WHO? WHAT? WHEN? WHERE? WHY? and SO WHAT?   Those qualifiers help me really understand more deeply the issues that I'm dealing with so that I can produce Quality as MY JOB 1 in whatever I'm doing that day.

These are my thoughts, what are yours?
Steve