“What’s the use you learning to do right when it’s troublesome to do right and ain’t no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?” Mark Twain, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
We all want to do the right thing, but from time to time the temptation is there to take a shortcut, because we are feeling under pressure., or because it is just easier.
Perhaps it is the quality department, who are being pressured to get stuff out to the customer. They can do it if they take a short cut and inspect fewer widgets – it is just this time, and it won’t matter.
Perhaps it is that proposal you are writing – it is easier just to cut and paste some content than do the hard work of creating the original content.
Maybe it is in sales, when the customer asks “Can I have it by this date?”
Or is it in customer support, where the documentation from the last version will do just fine.
The trouble is that shortcuts have a nasty way of coming back to bite you.
The extra inspection might have found the problem, but instead the customer found the problem and suddenly you are no longer a supplier.
That proposal didn’t meet the requirement, and you lost the opportunity
We didn’t meet the delivery date the sales team promised, and the customer is very unhappy.
The customer found a problem and the solution in the documentation doesn’t work – it did in the last version, but there’s been a change.
These shortcuts can appear to be nothing more than a quick fix, sometimes it doesn’t even feel like you are making a decision but actually it is a positive decision not to do something.
Like any action, consequences flow.