Anything Worth Doing is Worth Doing Well

I was reminded again today of this very simple but important principle in two separate instances with people on the team here at Return Path. I’ll describe them anonymously here, as I always will when I discuss things that happen at my company.

In one case, someone sent a document out to a prospect that was not “client-ready.” It had all the right content, but it was poorly formatted, not as well-organized as it could have been, had a couple of typos, and wasn’t on our company template. My colleague’s comment: “it got the job done, didn’t it?” My response: “it doesn’t matter — it didn’t look world class.”

In another case, someone had a relatively minor task to do, which was to turn some collateral and press clippings into a wall display for our office. It was something that could easily have been postponed or done in a half-assed way, but my colleague went to extra lengths to make sure it looked perfect and made our lobby area look very professional.

There is, of course, the 80/20 rule to keep in mind (that’s probably the subject of another posting), but for the most part, I’m a big believer in the axiom that anything worth doing is worth doing well.