Quantity buys you quality

When was the last time you evaluated the quality of your work instead of the quantity of it?

Most of us keep score by volume. Tasks checked off, projects shipped. This week at Groove we focused on quality instead. That doesn't mean we moved slow. The idea is simple. Instead of counting what got done, what if you ran everything through the lens of quality? If you do that, how does your behavior change? How do your projects change?

The first place we pointed that lens was the pages where we sell. We haven't been as good as we need to be there, so we're taking a first step. The caveat is that everything is iterative. You don't all of a sudden become perfect, and there will still be plenty to fix. It's a mindset shift more than a project. This week's piece has fewer numbers than usual. It's about how we think about being excellent.

Quality shows up everywhere

Think about the people you know who are fit. They eat the right food at the right times, and they move with quality. The food alone isn't enough.

Money, relationships, sales, they all work the same way. You can buy stocks every month without knowing why you own them, or talk to 25 people in a day without building depth with any of them. A salesperson can make every call on the list without making one of them the right way. In every case the count looks great and the value isn't there. The count is the easy part. The quality is what's worth something.

This is something that's stood out to me more and more over the years. The difference between high performers and everyone else is less what they do and more the quality with which they do it.

The quality loop

That sounds obvious. The next question is how you change the quality of your output, and I think the answer is quantity. It's a weird cyclical loop where the only way to figure out quality is more quantity. As the reps stack up, you need the intuition and the judgment to recognize when you've mastered a skill and can spend the reps somewhere else.

Every time I talk about this out loud, I notice how contradictory it is. Nothing about it lines up cleanly. When you talk about improvement, it's quantity. When you talk about outcomes, it's quality. Knowing which one you need right now is the hard part, and I think that's where most people get stuck.

The drills get simpler

Sports taught me this first. When I was ten, I remember being bored by the drills and wanting to do something else. In high school, same drills. I thought, why am I doing this again, I just spent four years on it. Then I got to college and some of the drills got even simpler. Everything gets reduced. I never played professionally, but I'd bet it's mostly hammering the fundamentals. The drills are the reps.

There's something calming about that, because you always know what to do. There's something stressful about it too, because at that level, the only people who can see that something isn't quality are the ones ahead of you. That's a scary place to be. It's also what makes teams hard. One person knows what good looks like, and the others can't see it yet.

The part I'm still working on

All of this has challenged how I look at my own work. I'm great at getting things done, very task oriented, but am I doing each thing as well as I could, or am I doing it so I can say I did it? A limiting belief I keep finding is that I won't be as good as I need to be.

Last year I signed up for HYROX. I trained a lot and I ate decently well, but I didn't go the extra ten percent that I know would have brought quality out of my performance. When it was done I could say I did it, and my time was better than average. I didn't fully send it, because there's anxiety there. What if I give it everything and still don't win?

There's something deeply unsatisfying about doing things half-assed. I don't know why, but I've never felt a sense of accomplishment from work other people called good. Maybe it's less about their approval and more about my own internal experience. I might need to race it again and find out.

Everyone knows it when they see it

Earlier I said the only people who can see that something isn't quality are the ones ahead of you. The flip side showed up at Groove this week. When the team pushed on quality, everybody recognized it. You might not be able to tell someone how to get there, but when you see it, you know it.

If everyone can recognize excellence when they see it, maybe the leadership job is showing it to them. Less about one on ones and being the support, and more about being the standard.

I like drawing comparisons between sports and business, and I don't know that it always translates. The people I respect most, though, the ones I'd work with again, all pushed me to uphold a standard. They didn't coddle me. I find it irksome to not be challenged, because if I'm not being challenged I'm staying the same, and if I'm staying the same, I don't need to be doing it.

The challenge this week

We picked one place to point the lens this week and took a first step. That's the whole approach. Keep it simple and keep moving forward. Pick the things you can do excellently. When you've reached mastery, it's all about quality. Until then, it's all about quantity. Maybe that's the distinction. I don't know yet.

So I'll leave you where I started. When was the last time you evaluated the quality of your work instead of the quantity of it? I'd like to hear how you think about mastery, and why you think most teams stall. Reply and tell me.