The Cost of Doing it Wrong

As the saying goes, if a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. It has been proven that doing a thing right the first time is most efficient and cost effective. But what is the cost of doing something wrong? In terms of money, I’ve seen cases where something is done incorrectly and then had to redone at a loss of $100k. In terms of time, you can model it in the following thought experiment.

If a task takes x amount of time to complete and it is done wrong the first time, how long does it take to fix it?  More than 4x. It takes to x amount of time to complete the task the first time, probably at least x amount of time to find out it was done wrong, another x amount to figure out what the first guy did, and finally x amount to fix it correctly.

We all can agree that time is money and if a task is done incorrectly it may cost at a minimum as much as four times as much as it would cost if done correctly the first time around.