2 Incredible Quality Failures You Can Learn From

Editor's note: this transcript was generated by AI and has been lightly edited for clarity and relevance — some sections have been shortened or removed, and minor transcription errors corrected.

Full transcript

00:00:06Host

Quality is that thing most of us don't think about until it goes wrong. In the past, quality has been undervalued in business, seen as an added cost rather than something necessary to the production and sale of a product. However, quality differentiates you from your competition, creates brand loyalty, and keeps you from failing spectacularly.

00:00:47Host

The Samsung Note 7. Samsung were on top of the smartphone game when this phone was released, eating into Apple's market share. It had received positive reviews and a strong marketing campaign, but the phones had a serious defect.

00:02:08Host

This tells us that market share, brand loyalty, and trust can take years to build, but only a moment to lose. Quality failure can have a devastating impact on a business, and if you roll out a substandard product under competitive pressure, it can have dramatic consequences.

00:02:32Host

The 2008 Global Financial Crisis has been labelled "the greatest quality failure of all time" by senior risk and compliance executive Paul Moore, who was dismissed in 2008 after warning senior managers about the dangers of taking on excessive risk.

00:03:08Host

The banking sector failed to recognise the implications of not pricing the risk of mortgage-related financial products properly. What this tells us is that modern businesses cannot prioritise profits ahead of quality.

00:03:42Host

A profit-focused approach, without a quality focus, will only encourage corner-cutting from the top down — which can be dangerous not only for your brand, but in some sectors, for human life. A quality focus has to be organisation-wide and part of core values, with real consequences for not meeting agreed quality standards.

00:04:16Host

Four things should become part of your company's focus: a quality control strategy, a failure prevention strategy, a process improvement focus, and a cultural improvement focus. Quality is not a drain on time and resources — it sets you apart from your competition, builds trust with customers and employees, manages risk, and improves the product and the supply chain.