Well, what is QC? Quality Control. You might have already known that, but you still started reading this because you were curious what we might have to say about it. If you didn’t know what quality control is, we’re going to introduce the concept to you and share some insight because we think it’s crucial. Now, there’s a good chance you have a different name for the same concept and that’s fine because at the end of the day we’re all trying to accomplish the exact same task: to provide a quality product.
This is where QC becomes very relative to your operational scale. The Walt Disney Company’s going to have a different way of handling their systems of checks and balances than Hungry & Fit LLC. While Fit might proofread and edit Hungry’s work and vice versa to make sure there aren’t any glaring mistakes or typos, Disney might have a million dollar team of twenty people to accomplish the same thing for a few reasons. Obviously they can afford it, there’s a lot more work to check, and there’s a lot more on the line.
Here’s an example. If they spend $1 million manufacturing 300,000 stuffed Hei Hei’s (from Moana) and someone in the design team forgot to give him crazy eyes, and SOMEHOW those made it to stores, they probably wouldn’t sell. That’s an expensive mistake that someone could have caught along the line. Even though Disney might have a QC team (in every department) every single person that works on a project has to have quality control in mind.
With all that being said, you need to manage your expectations based on your operation and make sure you never press publish without checking your work over and over again. We’re not sure about you, but growing up in our educational system we were forced to go over all of our answers on any tests before handing them in to the teacher. The teacher would walk around the room to make sure you’re going over your answers because there’s nothing worse than knowing how to do something and just being lazy or careless enough to succeed. Quality control isn’t the same as taking calculated risks, it’s really just avoiding stupid mistakes.
Here’s an example of two painful errors that we recently found on the internet from two entirely different sources. First, above you’ll see ESPN has two different stories about the Duke and UNC basketball game, which show the teams receiving different seeds. One person made a mistake when publishing their piece but it’s here for millions to see because they were both shown on the same page at the same time. For a company that large, someone needs to constant be watching the front end (what the consumer sees) to make sure these mistakes don’t stay up for more than a few minutes, even though it should never get to that point. The consequence was probably nothing serious but it’s hard to tell what happens behind the scenes.
The second one is from a far smaller business on Instagram that is trying to capitalize on selling apparel to the fans of Dragonball Z. What’s wrong with that? Well, any fan of Dragonball Z would know that they spelled something wrong and therefore would have no interest in the shirt. Who knows how they operate? We’re not sure but if they happened to run 500 of those shirts for $2500, they just threw away nearly $2500. That’s a huge hit for a small business. If they designed and ran the right shirts but only had the incorrect post on social media, it still hurts business because a true fan (their target audience) probably wouldn’t take them seriously enough anymore to give them their money.
The bottom line is that quality control matters because a company should set standards and meet those standards every single day with every single project or product they create. While it is relative to the operations of the business or individual, there needs to be some system to avoid mistakes that should not be made. In a world with so much competition and over saturation in nearly every industry imaginable, a single mistake can have a huge impact. Give yourself every opportunity to succeed and if you do make a mistake, don’t make the same one twice. And as always, stay hungry and fit!
