What inefficiencies drive your business?

Efficiency isn’t always the goal. (Any consultant or private equity bros reading my blog just scoffed and clicked away to something else.)

Efficiency is worth pursuing, but we shouldn’t strive to be ruthlessly efficient in all things. Such emphasis is bound to lead to a lack of quality.

In the 21st century, quality is in short supply. Unfortunately, improving quality isn’t guaranteed to directly improve profits, so quality is often an afterthought in modern business.

If done right, genuine quality can be your best marketing strategy. The problem is that it’s hard to think that way, because Quality doesn’t show up as a line item in the marketing budget. So many businesses promote that they have quality products and services, but far too many cut corners and push quality to the side.

As Seth Godin has pointed out on his blog¹, your product and marketing are not separate entities. Marketing should instead inform the development of your product:

Marketing is not the same as advertising. Advertising is a tiny slice of what marketing is today, and in fact, it’s pretty clear that the marketing has to come before the product, not after. As Jon Don points out, the Prius was developed after the marketing thinking was done. Jones Soda, too. In fact, just about every successful product or service is the result of smart marketing thinking first, followed by a great product that makes the marketing story come true.²

What exactly is quality though? Simply put, quality suggests you went above and beyond the competition in at least one area of your product or service.

Maybe you chose to follow the status quo on 99% of your offering, but quality means there’s at least one area for which you decided to forgo efficiency. A business consultant may challenge you on that decision and recommend falling in line with the competition. Should you listen? That depends on how crucial that inefficiency is to the identity of your offering.

Quality work is hard. It takes time. Focus. Dedication. Some sort of inefficiency is required to make quality.

Is it possible that some sort of inefficiency is required for good business? If so, then what inefficiencies are worth the hassle? Which inefficiencies should your business be proud of?