Process.

Ari Weinzweig on quality ...

Rather than the usual more logical, reasoned language of business books, Pirsig’s framing is more of a stream-of-consciousness rant that gets to the point in a beautiful way: 

Quality ... you know what it is, yet you don't know what it is. But that's self-contradictory. But some things are better than others, that is, they have more quality. But when you try to say what the quality is, apart from the things that have it, it all goes poof! There's nothing to talk about. But if you can't say what Quality is, how do you know what it is, or how do you know that it even exists? If no one knows what it is, then for all practical purposes it doesn't exist at all. But for all practical purposes it really does exist. What else are the grades based on? Why else would people pay fortunes for some things and throw others in the trash pile? Obviously some things are better than others ... but what's the betterness? ... So round and round you go, spinning mental wheels and nowhere finding anyplace to get traction. What the hell is Quality? What is it?

Thinking back on all my years in business, I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone who didn’t claim to be in support of improved quality. Both Pirsig and every expert I’ve engaged with advocate in favor of it. All make clear how critical having high quality is to the health of one’s business, but their definition of it, to me, always seemed sort of confusingly circular. It’s accurate, but ultimately, for me, wholly unhelpful. My friend Seth Godin got me smiling when he summed up the same point super succinctly: “Quality as defined by Deming and Crosby: Meeting spec.” While delivering what we’ve committed to deliver to our customers makes complete sense to me, it sure seems like we need something more than shooting to hit formally specified standards to make our work meaningful. The emphasis on “making things as we’re supposed to make them” certainly isn’t inappropriate, but it feels as if there are deeper questions that are being dismissed in the process. As Pirsig puts it, it’s as if “the truth knocks on the door and you say, ‘Go away, I'm looking for the truth,’ and so it goes away. Puzzling.”