Building

Setting the Quality Bar

If your company values excellence and craft, you'll have the same debate: Is this good enough?

Who sets the quality bar? Everyone's palate is different.

So I let the customer set the bar.

Not by asking them. Customers won't tell you what great looks like. You decide what you want them to say and feel about your product, brand, and company. That's the bar you hold the work up to.

If you want customers to believe you're fast-moving and innovative, quality means one thing. If you want them to believe you're trusted and reliable for the long run, it means something else. Same word, two different bars.

This approach won't settle every debate. But it shifts the discussion from "what do I think is good?" to "how should it feel to the customer?" And that's a question the team can answer together.

What do you want your customer to feel? Does everyone in the company know?