I grew up always believing that quality was a more important ideal to strive for. That you should put your best effort forward and win on the merits of your work product. That quality engineering and craftsmanship are the higher ideals. I still believe that way, or at least I want to believe that way. However, sometimes, it is crucial to admit that this philosophy can be decisively wrong. This is not a black and white sentence. I think there are times when quality is absolutely the most important, for example, when the surgeon is performing open-heart surgery! However, at other times, the ethic of always putting quality first may not be the right stance based on the circumstances.
My best example of this is World War II. When I was in my twenties, I spent a great deal of time studying the war. I was in a program at school that focused on the rhetoric of various political leaders during the conflict, so I became invested in understanding what was driving confident leaders to use the language they chose and what went into the calculus behind their decisions. The German Army was meticulous in its record keeping, transcriptions, note-taking, and documentation of its decision-making process. This was probably the first significant conflict in the modern era in which communication was also transmitted, which meant vast volumes of data on the attitudes, fears, and beliefs of leaders, middle management, and other combatants.
The German Army was a well-oiled, precise machine. The high command had organized and planned its war machine with astonishing clarity. They had the supply chain, industrial production, and military discipline organized and ordered in a manner never seen before. They were absolutely of the mindset that quality was superior to quality in almost every respect. This mindset would ultimately be their downfall. There are a couple of instances in recorded meetings where the dismay of the military command is clearly communicated in dire terms, going as far as to say that their war effort was doomed.
The first of these was when they realized they grossly underestimated the United States’ involvement in the war. They knew that the U.S. would eventually get involved in some manner. They would provide supplies and potentially some troops. However, it was estimated that the response time would be slow, the soldiers unenthusiastic, and the capability to fight a two-front war across two oceans and deliver the necessary machinery would be time-consuming and too costly. The Germans viewed this through the quality-first lens, and rightfully so. This had served them well. In almost every situation, their war machine was far better supplied, better prepared, better trained, and more advanced than anyone they had faced.
However, after Pearl Harbor, the reports started coming back from spies they had at U.S. based shipyards, industrial centers and factories. At first they thought this was a fanciful delusion. They thought this was gross overexaggeration and propaganda. There was no way the lazy, capitalist swine across the Atlantic could build anything competently, much less at scale. However, within a few months there were ship yards producing entire cargo ships in less than a week. Bombers were flying out of the Ford factory at a rate that far surpassed the entire gross production of all of Germany. The German U-boats were sinking ships at an incredible rate, but the production of the Americans would dwarf anything they could possibly destroy. Tanks were coming down railways heading for coastal cities in massive quantities. Every automobile manufacturer was now cranking out military vehicles at a rate that was unbelievable.
The quality of this equipment was nowhere near German technical capability. A single German panzer could outgun, outmaneuver 20 American tank crews, but did it matter? The German high command realized that they had underestimated the industrial might of the United States and, even more importantly, the brazen disregard for quality in favor of speed and quantity. The second significant moment of realization was after D-Day. When the beach landing occurred and the Allied Forces had landed and dug in, the full impact of this industrial might became apparent. A single U.S. lieutenant leading a platoon could, with a single radio call, request cannon, air, tank, and naval support. All of these resulted in bombardment with massive ammunition payloads. The Americans would not risk charging a hedge row or a machine gun station if they could not first try to annihilate with enormous amounts of firepower. In the German mind, things like tanks, canons, and even trucks were reserved and delivered with precision in the exact amounts needed. In the American mindset, you just indiscriminately dumped everything you had on a single machine gun turret, no regard for cost.
This is best represented by a single field report in which a German team captured a supply chain dump for an American deployment. The number of cigarettes and chocolate bars was grotesque. The number of bullets supplied to so few soldiers was just unbelievable. The Americans had no concern for waste. The Germans had no conception of this at all. Most of their troops walked or rode horses to the front lines, and cannons, tanks, and munitions were used for strategic assaults. The audacity that the Americans could all just jump in trucks, jeeps, and order complete carpet bombing of German positions had not even been a thought. Yet, here they were, facing a military machine that was completely overwhelming them with a sheer quantity of gas-guzzling engines and a ridiculous and brazen use of artillery. In this example, quantity annihilated any concept of putting quality first.
I was reminded about this today in a conversation with my business partner. Should we hold back a little? Should we keep some things in reserve? Should we hold off on this critical hire because we are not quite ready? The quality mentality we need when producing our product may not be the same one we should have when approaching the market. Perhaps speed and quantity are far superior to a strategy when larger competitors outmatch you. As we discussed, we concluded that in some areas we cannot hold back; we have to go as fast as humanly possible and drive quantity where and when we can. To get to that critical point where we have enough market attention to reach the next level, we cannot be so worried and meticulous in our approach that we are left behind by the competition, or just overwhelmed by the sheer volume of less prepared competitors.
I read a book about the famous German general Erwin Rommel. Most of the German command took their resounding defeat of the American tanks in their first encounter as proof that the stupid, lazy Americans could never last against the superior fighting force that Germany assembled. Rommel knew the truth of the matter. An enemy that is willing to throw that much steel at you and abandon that much military equipment on the battlefield was not going to go away. All the precision and brilliance in the world would never survive such a massive supply of industrial force.
