BR19: On Maximising the Value of Your Input

Cutting corners is not productive. 

For a horribly fitting real-world example, look no further than Boeing, and the heavy costs incurred by their corner-cutting on the 737 Max model (which led to crashes, followed by the global grounding of all models, followed by stock & sales losses, followed by resuming flights, followed by a door coming off a plane mid-flight, followed by more stock & sales losses and prompting the CEO to resign).

Cutting costs at the expense of quality and safety standards was a particularly bad idea for Boeing, given its industry, but their hard-earned lessons apply just as much to products that don’t have an impact on customer safety.

There are countless reasons why companies end up having to cut costs or increase their revenue by new means. And it’s indeed far more difficult to figure out ways to significantly increase productivity without sacrificing in areas like quality, safety, ethics, or compliance.

...but that’s how you build long-lasting, sustainable improvements to product value. When you effectively figure out how to do something faster and better than the competition. Not just faster.

And again, this is difficult. But if you take corner-cutting off the table and give yourself enough time and resources, you have a shot at actually outperforming your competition in a sustainable manner that doesn’t lead to losses later on.

Solutions are out there. But we do need to take compromises in key areas off the table in order to find them.