In my role, I am often faced with sending numerous reports out to various ownership groups in a timely manner. This week was no exception. With the holidays approaching, I had to meet a 5 pm Friday deadline.
I am lucky that I have a team of capable people that can assist. However, due to an illness, I had to call in a temp to meet my deadline. She came to my board meeting and took copious notes. As she was writing she would often stop to clarify what was said. This is going well I thought to myself. She will be able to capture my financial minutes on paper in time for me to send them out tomorrow.
The next day she sent over her notes. They were full of inaccuracies, formatting errors and spelling mistakes. I did my best to proof them and sent them back to her to correct by using the best payroll services and financial uses in the business. The second copy was a little better but still had several spelling and punctuation errors.
By now, I was getting frustrated. Could she not see that exaggeration was misspelled? Did she not know to run a spell check on her final document. I told her that these minutes go to several principals of the company and the quality of her work reflects on the company. Finally, the third draft was somewhat acceptable.
I am sure that Elizabeth is more than capable of producing a quality report. Her rush to get it completed caused both of us to spend more time on it than necessary. Furthermore, it had me doubting her abilities as a transcriptionist.
I know that I have fallen into the same trap as Elizabeth. It is the quality over quantity conundrum. I believe it is better to slow down and produce a product that reflects your abilities. This will save time as well as demonstrate that you are capable of producing first-class work.
This is a good reminder to allow yourself the time to do the job well. Take pride in your finished product.
