Doing everything with quality increases your chances for success, enhances your reputation, and saves you time in the long run. People typically equate quality with skill, but quality is a by product of time, thoughts and systems.
Here are twenty-one ways to assure quality in everything you do. See where you can apply a couple of these rules to your life. In a few weeks, review the impact.
Review
1. Review Everything
Review everything you touch before you hand it off. Proofread your documents one last time, double check that package to make sure everything is included, triple check your bullet points on your presentation. Always enlist a second set of eyes. Even after you look things over, you may miss some glaring mistakes because you are used to your work. Having someone else look it over will give you a new perspective on your work and may even lead to new, better solutions.
2. Review Other’s Contributions
Don’t take it for granted that others can do the job well or even that they know what they’re doing. Trust but verify. Remember the saying, “Don’t expect what you don’t inspect.”
3. Review Your Mistakes
Sometimes you make mistakes. Learn from them and move on.
4. Review Accomplishments
A lot can be learned from your past accomplishments. Take the time to go over your past work and look objectively at what you did well and didn’t do so well. There are many lessons to learn.
Control
5. Control Your Task List—Don’t Drop Anything
Keep track of your commitments. If you don’t know what you need to do, you can’t do it well.
6. Control Your Commitments: Just Say No
With a heavy workload, it may be hard to get everything done right. This may mean saying no to new projects.
