Mediocrity Pills: Quick

Quick

We live in a culture that venerates and sells speed. Now is better. Real-time is a must.

“Could we do it in 3 weeks instead of 3 months?”

And the deaf question of those incapable of understanding or just mediocrely¹ rejecting their duty of true understanding:

“Why does it take so long?”

“What took you so long?”

There’s a basic and critical misconception in demanding quick, which is the annulment of quality and the time needed. With technological evolution and the capacity of forgetting the essence and soul artisans brought to society, at some point, we stopped thinking not only about what resources were needed to deliver a product or service, but a good product or service. At some point, we ended up accepting the fallacy of if it’s quick, it’s good, and elevated it to a core value seeded very deep with full capacity and zero criticism. It speaks very loudly about the impact of what we do for a living. And I’ll take the opportunity to also write about another recurrent blatant evidence: quick outcomes without soul leave companies, workers, stakeholders fighting to become the cheapest. Those who know little about business just create a balanced or diversified investment portfolio because, you know, you should never put all your eggs in the same basket. Back to the point, we live in mediocre scenarios accepted as the way our work should be done, a caveat from the start that struggles and will carry on doing so with -lack of, long-lasting quality.

Having the value side of things reviewed with healthy critical thinking, we should know what standards are to serve clients, employees and society. Quick will be there waiting for us, but it should never be an unreviewed constant to guide the essence of what we do.

It is expected that, as artisans do, with good practice, you get skilled at elaboration and creation. An apprentice will take longer than a master to get that chair done. The master is quicker at doing but understands that the apprentice needs time to reach, and hopefully, overcome their mentor. In a similar approach, we should pay better attention to what a good job means in contrast to just accepting quick means good. It’s paradoxical how we still sense some kind of critical resistance to associate fast food with good food, but we are pushed as much as we tolerate to be quick learners, execute quick tasks, quick processes, quick everything…(!)

I happen to be in scenarios where I or my team needed to deliver as fast as possible, both in hospitality and digital marketing. Even when speed was critical, quick wasn’t the essence of what we did. In the pub, 15 minutes was all we had to transform an incoming order on a plate in the hot window way to a client’s table. Fact. But the plate was meticulously dissected in recipe, preparation, training and practice. And business-wise, focusing only on getting best standards plates, profitable value for money, taking into account only client satisfaction and quick delivery only led to huge rotation. Because with it, another not taught KPI but experienced one through hard work was that if the job required 2 full staff, we were 1, and only when the work needed 5 were we 2. Regardless of hands available, you needed to get those plates out fast. And so the maths were played that way because if plates were delivered in 15 mins by 1 person, why hire 2? Senseless waste of money! Profitable for business? Yeah. I came to realise and keep it clear in my precarious memory that we managed to become good at delivering played-by-the-book quick. I do keep a memory of those I happened to build and work with as a team. But it wasn’t a place to stay longer than it took us to find somewhere else to make a living from. We did good quick, even when it wasn’t good for us. The book did not keep us together.

I can also tell you that dealing with errors at scale requires being time aware. Global impact has little patience. But it also happens that within me there’s this habit of improving so I don’t need anyone to think of efficient ways of doing my job. So do the majority of good professionals I happen to meet and work with. If you can get it done in 15 mins, you don’t take longer. It is nonsense. It goes against our own valuation as professionals and any good ethics. I do happen to understand that the first email I created might take me 5 hours to fully understand and get done, and by my third one, I improved the process to 30 mins. I leave you to decide what role you play and what you think brings better value, to decide whether just an isolated quick is good or just fast.

^{1 Edit done on 19th November 2024. In the original version I could not find the adverb for mediocre. Asked Chat GPT and also did a… guess what? QUICK search online and couldn’t find “mediocrely”. I decided to go ahead and publish. Two weeks after that, I still had that idea in my head and… found it. Just to proof how quick might impact what you do. Here a real example. Also, if you were curious, this is what the previous paragraph looked like:
And the deaf question of those incapable of understanding or just mediocrically, mediocritically, rejecting their duty of true understanding:
“Why does it take so long?”
And in case you were wondering, it seems there’s no adverb for mediocrity in English, but “in a mediocre way”, sadly as present as it is, deserved a daring attempt here.}