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One of the most important axioms I ever learn about professional services marketplace leadership was from Carl Bochmann, a former Booz Allen Hamilton partner, who taught me that "quality is your best salesperson...."
No matter which professional sector I've advised, be it accounting or executive search, management consulting or architecture, or any other, this lesson applies. It also applies to my own firm.
It's especially painful, then, to watch the unfolding events related to Boston's Big Dig. A week ago, last Monday night, 12 tons of cement from one of the Big Dig tunnels collapsed on a vehicle, killing a passenger. The Massachusetts Attorney General is calling this "a crime scene," and "Reilly's office already has begun issuing subpoenas to those involved in the design, manufacturing, testing, construction and oversight of the panels and tunnel."
You can imagine the unbelievably negative marketplace reputation that will be assigned to the many professional firms that were involved in this huge project. Your firm -- and mine -- might feel somewhat smug, that at least our work doesn't result in people dying! But one need only look as far as Enron and Arthur Andersen to be reminded of the massive marketplace shifts that occurred after that scandal -- and those that we are still feeling.
We could be at the early stages of seeing this happening again in the design, engineering, construction and construction management sectors.
I don't care what your profession is, or how clever your marketing strategy might be: quality has got to figure on your company's ground level.
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Comments
Suzanne,
I worked in scientific software engineering for 17 years.
You cannot have a quality product if the customer isn't interested. On a couple of projects my company should have refused the work because of weaknesses in the contract. Bad quality is often the result, along with cost over-runs, and years of delay getting an eventual version the meets expectation for quality and function. Many government customers expected that, and companies competed for the work knowing what low-quality work does to damage their work force.
So when you start trying to improve quality, you have to have your company involved from procurement through CEO through marketing. Oh, and the engineers and other developers, too. Let an over-eager salesman claim 'we can do that' when it doesn't mean the best product, and everyone loses. Supervisory and executive management have to be on board or someone will gut quality to make some contradictory goal (either knowing or ignorant of the consequences).
If the Big Dig was such crap that everyone looked bad, then the only common factor was the customer. My experience is that when the customer decides to limit quality, no one gets to do a workmanlike job.
What I am seeing is demogoguery to deflect criticism and built personal careers in the DA office.
Posted by: Brad K. | 07.17.06
Brad, you've made some great points (while I was away on vacation; sorry for the delay in responding to you). In fact there are now reports surfacing that the client insisted on cost cutting, cost cutting, cost cutting. You get what you pay for, they say.
Posted by: Suzanne Lowe | 08.14.06