I recently missed
a deadline.
I was supposed to send
my story to be edited
on Friday.
It wasn’t ready.
It wasn’t at the standard
readers (customers)
expected from me.
Not sending it on time
meant I was messing up
my editor’s schedule.
But sending it
before it was ready
would waste her time.
Her feedback
would have been
‘It needs major revisions’,
something I already knew.
“When I see a mediocre movie,
read an unfunny section
of Mad Magazine
or
engage with forgettable services,
I wonder if they decided,
“well, I’m out of time,
so it’s done.”
That’s not
a useful standard.”
In a crowded market
(and almost all markets
are crowded
right now),
customers are unlikely
to give a product or service
another chance.
Offering a substandard
product or service
means we lose
that customer forever.
It is better
to miss a deadline
than
to disappoint customers.