There’s an old saying, “walk a mile in another man’s shoes.” It means that before you criticize someone or pass judgment on them, you should take a look at the world from their point of view.

To have empathy for someone means you are putting yourself in a position to feel what that person is feeling. The world could use a great deal more empathy. It’s easy to see that we could decrease disputes and disagreements by being more empathetic, and we’d quickly clear up misunderstandings and misconceptions. Taking it one step further, empathy becomes strategic as new channels of data open to us.

To illustrate this point, meet Cooper, the owner of a large family-owned insurance brokerage in Los Angeles. It was during the time when everyone was still getting used to email. Due to the nature of their business, Cooper felt that the company needed to keep a paper record of every client email.

Cooper’s office manager disagreed. She predicted enormous paper waste, but he was adamant. So the rule went into effect without further discussion. After all, Cooper was the boss.

Two years later, Cooper was working late on a presentation for a new client. The printer in his office malfunctioned, so he routed a document he needed to a shared printer in the main office. As he waited for his presentation to be printed, he looked down at the trash can and was startled by what he saw: enormous but neat stacks of printed emails. What a waste of paper, he thought to himself.

The next morning, he asked his office manager about the trash and what he heard surprised him even more: the waste was the result of his own email policy two years ago.

Fortunately, Cooper realized he needed to listen to his office manager when she explained how much waste had occurred in terms of dollars and cents: $300 a month, $7,200 since the email policy was passed, and more than $14,000 in total costs when she added toner and staff time.

After talking with his sales agents and staffers, he learned that everyone thought that the policy was wasteful and inefficient. Initially, he was frustrated that no one took the initiative to explain it to him, but then he realized that they did not because he was so adamant.

When team members employ empathy as part of their day-to-day management, it becomes a powerful tool that opens new insight and understanding about problems and situations they may not have realized existed. Instead of one or two perspectives, you can open yourself to three or four perspectives all at one time.

Just about every position in a company can benefit from empathy. In fact, I cannot think of a single job description where an ounce of empathy would not help improve productivity, team cohesion, and, most of all, the quality of output.

In a world where everyone wants to improve quality, everyone must contribute, and everyone must have a voice. By being empathetic, we also gain commitment to make quality an integral part of life both at both work and home.

Several years ago, in an article entitled “In Pursuit of Excellence” for Personal Excellence magazine, Michael Jordan said that he always had the ultimate goal of being the best. “I approached everything step-by-step, using short-term goals. When I met one goal, I set another reasonable, manageable goal that I could achieve if I worked hard enough.”

That approach worked well for one of basketball’s greatest players. That same approach can help steer just about any other career from accountant to zoo keeper. Find a vision that you feel passionate about, and pursue it with the idea that you will achieve many goals along the way.

Companies work from a strategic vision—why shouldn’t you and your organization? Want to drive people toward a common goal, or inspire excellence? Observe every great talent and you’ll find a strategic vision at the core of their success.

When we look for excellence within our organizations, we seek out people who have the talent to make things happen. The “things” can be large or small. Mostly, we need people who have the ability make their efforts sustainable. Sometimes, I have found these people simply by engaging them in a discussion about excellence.

I also believe that there’s much to be gained from knowing your personal strengths, as well as being able to transform your weaknesses into strengths. But the fact remains that our strengths are places where we feel the most comfortable. In fact, you might say that it is our strengths that empower us the most.

Keeping that in mind, you should identify performance areas where people are forced outside of their comfort zones. When we build outside our comfort zones, we tend to destroy barriers that prevent us from growing stronger.

Let me give you a quick example. I have never been shy about challenging myself. Before I left my home country of Bangladesh for the United States, I learned to speak English. I knew that I would not be competitive if I did not communicate effectively. That meant I had to get to a level where I could speak and write well. Writing was my greatest weakness.

Day and night, I worked on my writing skills. Ultimately I completed a Masters’ degree in engineering at a U.S. university. I have written 13 books, and have consulted with many of the largest corporations in the world. My ability to communicate in English empowered me, and drove my career in quality management. I guarantee that if you improve yourself by focusing on your own weaknesses, you will find new strengths and empower yourself.

When we encourage talent, we cannot forget to demonstrate how discipline and determination turn dreams into realities. Discipline focuses our work effort; determination forces us to keep working at every turn—together, they empower us.

When I talk about “honesty” in the context of quality, people often mistake my intent. I do not intend to imply that people are dishonest nor that poor quality is indicative of people being dishonest nor that they do not know right from wrong. I most definitely do not suggest that possessing quality is in any way elitist nor that the character of a people, and the societies with which they belong, can be measured by someone else’s impression of quality.

The kind of honesty I point to is the kind that helps people like you and I avoid mistakes in our businesses, or when there are mistakes, help us correct errors quickly. This kind of honesty is the type that pushes up good data, right actions, and a positive future.

Here are some examples of what happens when honesty in quality does not rise to the top:

• • What happened that allowed the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform to explode and release millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico? Detailed testimony during the court case against BP suggests that the engineers and management were aware of possible problems, but that they ignored the warnings. Management put a great deal of pressure on people to get the well producing as fast as possible. Management never said—do this at all cost—but the managers of the drilling platform felt they had no choice. So they pushed as hard as they could and took many risks along the way.
  • Politicians who enacted the Budget Control Act of 2011 were swamped by data. Supporters claimed that budget sequestration was necessary to reduce America’s dependence on deficit budget spending. However, all sides agreed that such a law could alter America’s military readiness. The decider however was a political impasse that forced everyone’s hand. Less than a year after the law was enacted, a top of the line attack nuclear submarine was severely damaged due to budget limitations to secure it during a drydock refit. After the accident, the US Navy found they didn’t have the budget to repair the damage. Therefore a $1 billion piece of valuable military equipment ended up in the scrap yard instead.
  • The Japanese government and a national power company claimed that the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster was the result of unforeseen circumstances. Reports have since come out that they had received many warnings about the Fukushima installation; from the time it was planned in the 1960’s through the day it was commissioned in 1972. The warning: the plant was vulnerable to tsunami and earthquakes. None of the members of the management team had ever lived through a great earthquake and tsunami. The incidence of such events had occurred through Japan’s history, but they were so infrequent that management considered the possibility as extremely small.

These examples are of people misusing data because they choose to ignore what they believe are fringe possibilities, not realizing how their decisions endanger themselves and others. When such decisions produce disastrous results, people often make the irrational claim that management is deliberately dishonest. Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, massive failure like the Deepwater Horizon disaster shows serious errors in how large organizations make bad decisions depending on how they manage risk. In the case of the Budget Control Act of 2011, “management” (the legislature) knew there were problems, but chose to ignore them because there was no political will to reach out for better solutions. Fukushima is again an error in managing risk, but also ignoring the fact that their engineers had good solutions that could have been implemented retroactively.

Large corporations and especially government and government agencies rely heavily on management consensus for their big decisions. The nature of the agreement could be based on several criteria like risk assessments, mitigation, cost factors, profitability, and so on. No single factor is the driving force in any decision, especially when there are political elements involved. Moreover, that’s how disasters can happen.

In the cases I mentioned above, it is very likely that few people thought that the risk levels were high enough to change their minds or offer alternative solutions. More than likely, they never heard the warnings because, by that time, the signs had been filtered out or diluted to the point that they didn’t stand out. Ultimately, the decision makers did what many people do: they just went with the flow.

To me, “going with the flow” means that you are not listening to the data, you are not enriching your actions, and you are not optimizing your future. When you make decisions as they did at BP or Fukushima, you’re taking an average of possible answers and hoping nobody notices that you took a shortcut. The problem is, these days, even the most innocuous alternatives can set off terrible global disasters.

When you have real honesty in management, information flows freely. You have actual data, compelling action, and a positive future. If you do not have honesty from everyone in your organization, how can you make the right decisions? How can you trust the quality of your processes if your people can’t be honest with you?

It’s one thing to inspire people to come up with ideas to improve the level of quality in your organization. It’s yet another thing to encourage those same people to turn their ideas into action.

When you are nurturing the talent in your organization, this may be one of the management challenges you will face.

You could do what a friend of mine did. He got a poster of Auguste Rodin’s sculpture “The Thinker” and attached a sign to it: “This is an Idea”. He then picked up another poster, Antoine Bourdelle’s “Hercules, the Archer” and attached another sign: “This is Action.” Above both posters, he hung a bigger sign: “Which would you rather be?”

What a powerful contrast of images – a man sitting and thinking, and a warrior archer at the very moment of commitment. Everyone wants to be seen as the one who takes action, but do we want people shooting arrows everywhere without thinking?

When you start a quality revolution, remember that everyone works at their own pace. Some people will take longer to come up with the one idea that is remarkable; the one that changes everything. People will be as bold as you want them to be, and you can be enthusiastic and encouraging, but there will still be barriers. The questions you need to ask—and answer— are the following:

• What will you do to help people overcome barriers?
• What will you do to encourage them to be disciplined and dedicated to the organization’s mission?
• How will you encourage them to integrate quality into everything they do?

The first thing you need to do is embrace positivity. Positivity means more than putting on a happy face—it means encouraging people by getting them excited about their prospects. Positivity means participating in discussions, offering suggestions, and – above all – showing that you are interested in outcomes. From a leadership perspective, positivity means motivating someone else, and giving them a reason to be enthusiastic about their ideas and to take decisive action.

You can also show people what it means to embrace a challenge. Some managers I know love to use stories about athletes and coaches. Some others might tell stories about inventors like Thomas Edison or Henry Ford. Lately, I’ve begun to use my own life to show how passion has helped me overcome challenges.

From my early years in Bangladesh, I had to struggle to overcome severe economic and social obstacles. My mentor during those early days was my maternal grandfather. One day, he offered me a ten taka note (about ten dollars) and a plain ballpoint pen. He told me to pick one, and he would give it to me. I picked the money. He gave me the money but then said, “Don’t go for money. Always go for the pen. With the pen, you can create knowledge. If you have knowledge, then you can lead the world.”

There’s more to raising enthusiasm about quality than just excitement. How would you like to be treated? What would motivate you?

If you engage this work seriously; if you are honest with yourself and your honesty permeates your organization, your workforce talent will emerge and bloom—and amazing things will happen

There has been a lot of media coverage about enormous salaries paid to top executives, including their mind-boggling “golden parachutes”. Primarily CEOs, these executives aren’t always paid based on their talents.

In fact, what many people fine surprising is that employee pay is often not based on what they contribute to the organization. Most companies have no idea how to calculate the contributions from individual members of the workforce.

Why should you be concerned about talent in your own workforce? It’s simple: talent produces quality. People with the talent who are also inspired perform better and possess the gifts they need to sustain the highest level of performance possible. All of my experience has shown me that talent is the key to the successful implementation of a quality revolution. They’re also people who, at the moment you need them most, unexpectedly spring into action:

• The hotel manager and cook who quickly put together a fantastic spread for a guest whose caterer was caught up in a traffic accident.
• The sales manager of a parts manufacturer who used her own car to drive three hours so she could personally deliver a critical component a customer needed to keep its production moving the next day.
• The young grocery clerk who guided customers to the safety of a walk-in freezer during an especially bad hostage situation. The clerk was later hailed as a hero by the international press.

If you work for a small business, the chief talent is possibly the founder because that’s what talent often does – they go off and start their own companies. But there are other “high potential” employees who work in your business right now, today. They are the indispensable people who, through their dedication and astuteness, do their jobs extremely well.

I believe that most potential employees can be nurtured into talent roles. You can guide and train them so that they know how to maximize the positive results that only they can achieve. While they work, their learning capacity increases as their confidence expands. While you work alongside them and manage them, you can focus their trajectory and help them build toward greater excellence so their talent shines.