October 20, 2024

The pendulum of quality

🎮❌ I just cancelled my X-Box Game Pass subscription.

I do so for the same reason I think many people cancel subscriptions:

  1. The value promise isn't being fulfilled
  2. I'm seeing quality go down
  3. Some of the comms feel disingenuous
  4. They let me down on a couple of big releases that seemed unfinished or felt underwhelming
  5. I started to find more of my fun/value elsewhere

🔁 This makes me think of the pendulum of quality.

When I speak publicly or post, I often discuss what I call the pendulum of quality. Visualize a "Newton's Cradle," one of those pendulum desk toys where the metal spheres knock on each other to transfer momentum. On one side of the pendulum, you have business objectives, whether leading indicators like customer acquisition or lagging indicators like revenue. On the other side, you have customer needs being fulfilled—customer value.

📈😀 When the pendulum operates correctly, there's a cycle of back and forth. The business gets what it needs and injects more value, one sphere knocking on the other to communicate what needs to be done down the line, and the customer gets what it needs on the other end and injects the business with what it wants in return– subscription revenue, clicks, whatever.

📉😓 Sometimes, the pendulum has trouble.

Someone holds a magnet to one end, or the mechanism of wires holding it up gets lop-sided. If it gets pulled too far to the business side, you get enshittification: capitalism on overdrive, reducing long-term quality in hopes of short-term business gains and prioritizing business value over the customer. If it gets pulled too far to the customer side, the business suffers and has trouble staying afloat. If the mechanism in the middle suffers, the cycle of back and forth has trouble and warbles all over the place. It can't cycle fast enough to learn and maintain momentum.

I often think about the pendulum regarding the businesses I work with and try to imagine what kind of magnets or issues with the mechanism exist.

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