Lisa Oreshkina

Quality without a name As companies grow, they often have a hard time with quality, and usually just give up on it. Main reason is that quality is something which cannot be easily measured or defined. As the companies scale, the way they operate or make decisions, are based more on measurements. They start flying with the dashboard instead of flying by looking out of the window because the former is easier to do in scale. Christoper Alexander opens his book Timeless Way of Building, that in order to build with a timeless way, we first need to find the “quality without a name”. What he is saying is that quality exists, it can be experienced and perceived, but it cannot be described by words. A town, place, or building that just feels good and natural. You can spec that a door needs hinges and locks that function, but we all have experienced a wide range of very smoothly working, quality doors, and very janky working, bad quality doors. Usually the quality doors happen because someone took the care to first build the door and all of its parts, and then install the frame and the door correctly, and kept it maintained over the years. Measurement like number of doors installed or times the door is used never gives you anything about how good it is. This throws off many people in the tech world, where often things are seen as binary and belief that the world or anything can be reduced to mathematical formulas. It’s almost as if you have to stop thinking for a minute, and just focus on the experience. The only way I know to promote quality in companies is to keep reminding people about the quality and why it matters. Most of us are in the retention business. We like to see our customers stick around, build trust and loyalty. Quality of the product, and customer is one the key drivers of that - yet many companies forget that. So how to promote it? You can give examples of previous quality things the team has built, show other products or show your way of looking at things. When something feels quality, it often feels natural and you may even feel positively surprised. Quality is so rare generally that people are often surprised by it. Quality rarely happens as an accident, it usually means someone is willing to go further building something that necessarily. At least, someone has to be motivated and allowed to do it, not forced to solely focus on some measurements. Quality, brand and culture are some of those intangible things you need to create as a company founder.