We often think of quality as embedded within a product. Does the product have the capabilities and craftsmanship I would expect? Is it well built? Does it function well? Those all matter, of course. But quality is as much in the building as it is in the product itself; quality before quality.
I kind of knew this for a long time but have often disregarded this idea in my push to ship and iterate. This is kind of like survival of the fittest - brutally effective but results in lots of death and hardship. I think of this as the golden triangle of quality: Inner game
Mindset before quality
This ties with another concept: playing the inner game of PM. This concept is well articulated in “the inner game of tennis”. It starts with me overcoming the anxiety of externals. That means I perceive challenges as opportunities to improve my game. That hard email? Opportunity to sharpen my diplomacy, That retrospective pointing directly at my failures? Opportunity to lead more effectively. Do we build products for the survival of the company? Do we build products to delight people?
I’ve found an irony in my time as a PM that what we say (let’s surprise and delight people with product we build) often doesn’t reflect the full reality (we are building to make money and keep the company alive). The way to know this is that if the delightful product you’re working on doesn’t have some major projected upside it’s likely to get demoted in favor of the product that does. The synthesis we often hear is that these are the same. After all, look at Apple - delighting customers and thriving. While this is true, Apple does not ship poor quality prototypes to learn. Their development process ensures what they ship is of high quality. That said their software is less high quality that What are the specific markers of quality then? They are measurable but more easily understood heuristically. Is the team happy, capable and trusting?
Mass-production misses this entirely. What is the quality embedded in outputs derived from no imagination? Even if one is on an assembly line do they believe in the widgets they are building? I watched Lev tuck in his owls at night. And I was struck that the doing is what matters. What is the point of doing things without that quality of the moment How can we know this is true? This is hardly an insight. Mothers that are stressed => methylation patterns passed onto the kids. Stressed cows produce hormones that make the meat taste bad. Outcomes derived by a process without joy or care/quality are less desirable. I find myself lately pulling way back from the outcomes and focusing on my authentic experience. Ask: how authentic is the decision I’m about to make? Is this something I actually believe in/can get behind? This approach diverges from my earlier tendencies to seek consensus and go with that. There an extra pause I now take in which I’ll run the scenario through my imagination. I see myself in the minds filmstrip and hold myself against some personal expectation. Does this make sense => does this make sense to me, to what I represent to myself? This will enable me to look back on decisions and say, yes, that was the right thing. This is extra important in handling hard situations.