Which Are You–Good, Fast, or Cheap?
February 29th, 2012 by Bob Bly
A sign on the shop floor of a manufacturing facility showed a triangle. Each corner was labeled: one was GOOD, another was FAST, the third was CHEAP. The caption under the triangle said PICK ANY TWO.
It makes sense to me. If you are cheap and fast, you probably aren’t very good. If you are good and fast, you can and should charge a premium fee. If you are cheap and good, you probably don’t allow customers to rush you.
If you are all three — cheap, good, fast — you are under constant pressure and probably not making that much money.
Which are you — good, fast, or cheap?
This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 29th, 2012 at 10:41 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
February 29th, 2012 at 11:16 am
I am good, because quality is one non-negotiable item as far as I’m concerned. As for the other two — well, let’s just say that the faster I’m asked to be, the less cheap I become.
March 2nd, 2012 at 5:37 pm
I’ve used a similar analogy for years. Great work takes time, talent and money.
You decrease the time, then you automatically increase the cost and talent requirements.
If you decrease the talent, then you increase both cost and time.
And finally, if you decrease the cost, then you increase the time required to do the work and you still need the talent.
The bottom line: you need all three to solve a given problem. As the waterline goes down on one, you automatically raise the level of the other two.
I’ve found this quite useful in negotiations. Every one gets it.
March 5th, 2012 at 7:31 am
[...] Which Are You–Good, Fast, or Cheap? [...]
March 21st, 2012 at 10:47 am
If I have to pick two out of three, I will choose good and fast. Quick thinking allows you to create a concept fast, and once finished, you have spare time to look back on it and make sure that it is something worth of presenting an audience.
Being cheap is only good for commodity businesses because it’s the nature of the beast. For service providers, everyone should aspire to be good first, and then fast.
April 26th, 2012 at 1:38 pm
This was very helpful