Don't Sacrifice Quality for Short-term Profit Goals

Books on productivity would tell you that management's decision to pursue short-term profit goals by curbing quality would result is various kinds of losses, including, rework, defects, loss of customer goodwill, etc.

Well i tasted this thing on the first day of a small start-up - namely a juice cafe - in college. I brought a labor guy with me, trusting his experience working in homes as chef, etc. He after seeing how costly our drink was, as it used 4-6 different kinds of fruits and/or fruit juices (packaged/unpackaged) concluded on day # 1 that this business won't make a nickel. Hence, he started to use some water in it to dilute it, to reduce costs. This juice was never meant to use water. Nonetheless, i made a big mistake and let him do that, thinking what difference can this little amount of water can make.

During the day & afterward, the most crucial negative customer feedback we got was that there was too much water in it - perhaps he mistook water for fruits & juices! Some asking to add something else apart from water.

How disastrous! From next day onwards we didn't add single droplet of water apart from what was coming through fruit juice; except in 1 juice which has to have water in it.

I forgot a fundamental business lesson: all investments are not covered on day 1! Moreover, you saw how low commitment to quality resulted in loss of goodwill & defects. Its important to note that the excess of water is "critical-to-quality" (CTQ) in juices for customers. It wasn't something customer didn't care about.