The following are my thoughts on the ceaseless debate of quantity vs quality (as they pertain to businesses' rendering of products and services)

I've admittedly been hyper-conscious on this lately as I've been taking on the challenge of overcoming the quality-quantity dichotomy.

Let's start with a synopsis of: 'high quantity paired with low quality'

What are the pros?

• Larger, more diverse client-base
• Greater economies-of-scale
• Shorter sales cycle
• More sales volume, and external exposure
• Consistent cash flow

What are the cons?

• Risking the "death valley" of average price points
• Fewer points-of-differentiation amongst competitors

And 'low quantity paired with high quality'

What are the pros?

• Higher price points
• Many points-of-differentiation amongst competitors
• Ability to attract better talent
• Ability to establish a culture of excellence

What are the cons?

• Smaller client-base
• Oscillating cash flow
• Magnetism to niche markets
• Scarcity of specialized employees
• Slower sales cycle

If you're thinking that the pros and cons of each of these approaches balance out, you're probably right. On paper, neither is better or worse, they are in fact two different organizational structures with a similar net-effect on cash flow and an organization's overall success.

I want to pose a final, very important thought:

Can high quality + high quantity be achieved?

My answer is ABSOLUTELY.

Here's a list of techniques you can use to help overcome the quality vs quantity dichotomy:

• Increase your quality by:
  • Productizing your offerings
    
    • Assign your offerings an identity
    • Clearly define deliverables
    • Make your offerings serializable
    • Iteratively increase value
    • Iteratively improve time-to-produce

• Increase your quantity by:
  • Creating and using business processes to increase efficiency
    
    • Become ridiculously consistent in reproducing your offerings
    • Constantly monitor performance metrics
    • Constantly refine processes - based on performance metrics
  • Never (ever) doing the same work twice
    • Compound value by performing work that can be reused or repurposed
    • Create a knowledge-base or repository of past-performed work and make it easily accessible