AtoZ Blogging Challenge – Q for Quality vs Quanity

Quality Vs Quantity is a constant battle faced by someone who has a shortage of resources. Even in our personal lives, we face this choice regularly. A shopaholic would understand this dilemma – one highstreet wardrobe workhorse or several trendy and cheaper pairs? In the corporate world where deadlines and deliverables are a way of life the quality vs quantity is an everyday tussle. And notice I say tussle here? Not struggle? In the ideal scenario, you’d want both. But the sad truth is quality work needs time and spending more time on a single piece of wok does mean leaving you lesser time for something else. So how do you deal with this quality vs quantity tussle?

1. Have you heard of the famous saying ‘pick your battles’? I feel it applies in every walk of professional life. In the quality vs quantity choice one has to be clear when to choose one over the other. My mantra is extremely simple. Choose according to your KRA. Look at the items that are aligned to your official KRA. Those need a greater focus on quality. These need the extra effort of double and triple checks and chasing and follow ups and all that stuff. The items that are not part of your KRA or have a lesser weightage can be sacrificed at the altar of quality in order to keep the momentum going.
2. Quite a few of us perceive ourselves to be perfectionists. This perception of ours becomes the excuse for delaying our work. It becomes a reason to procrastinate. We would sometimes not get started on something for want of complete knowledge. A five percent missing bit that is dependent on someone else who is on vacation. And we don’t even get started on that work. We would not hand in a report until every data table is perfectly formatted with the right colours, the bold and the italics and god knows what. Even when the back end data tables are not going to be looked at anyone. We have to spell check thrice on every document we submit. Ourselves; because word processing softwares can’t be trusted to do a good enough job! These are just excuses we give ourselves. Don’t fall into this trap. Fight your way out if you have fallen in. I am still doing this!
3. If you are in operations and the nature of your work is highly transactional, you will most likely be reviewed on the quantity. How many trouble tickets did you process? How many documents you checked? How many reports you created and the likes. In such scenarios, it is easy to start believing that it is only the number that matters and not the nature of work. That is not true! In such a job, it is very important to maintain a certain level of quality. How well you respond to queries, how prompt you are and how good the output is are very important factors in determining your reputation. If you maintain a certain quality consistently, a few slippages will not harm you. However, if your output is erratic… then you will be branded as unreliable. You don’t want that. It will be a big deterrent in your growth.