Treatment of imperfection as operating costs

In 2008, some College friends and I started a decade before bicycles and scooters appeared on the streets of every big city.

And the first question that asked us all was …

Won’t people just steal the bikes? How will you prevent this?

People assumed that theft would be widespread and they expected Fort Knox’s security accordingly.

But we knew some things that most people didn’t do.

• assumption: Without impenetrable security, all bicycles would be stolen.

• reality: Most stolen bicycles are activated or secured by weak cable locks.

• Solution: Simple U-Locks prevents 90% of the theft

• assumption: People who rent the bicycles are most likely to steal.

• reality: Most motorcycles are stolen by people outside of a community, not by those in it.

• Solution: Only give registered users access.

It was really that easy. We did not need security to Fort Knox Level to prevent the theft of 100%.

We only needed the theft costs to lower than the costs for prevention.

We carried out our first program on the University of Maryland campus from 2009. After two years, only one bike disappeared.

It was found a year later in the Shuttle Bus Depot campus after a driver forgot that they had attached it to the front of a bus.

Perfection is not a brand promise

I don’t know anything about you, but it seems to me that brand promise is getting bigger nowadays. And there is this assuming assumption that companies have to deliver perfection.

The reality is that it does not need perfection to make a brand promise.

And you don’t have to take it to me.

• If you don’t like your socks, Bombas offers a complete reimbursement without any questions. And you can keep the socks.

• Nordstrom famously accepts a return, even without receipt.

• And how many companies did you see that confidently offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee or your money?

These companies do not offer any setbacks because they assume that they stab it 100% of the time.

They do this because they have brought their products and their process to a point where they nail most of their time most of the time. And they have calculated that the costs for the removal of the few remaining errors are lower than the costs it would take to completely prevent them.

You treat errors such as operating costs. And if you scale your business, you should.

Because perfection is not the goal. The goal is profitability.