//Transform Your Organization through Quality

Transform Your Organization through Quality

2017-10-07T22:51:07+00:00

“Quality” is not just part of your business plan. It is a lifestyle choice - something that you do every moment of your life and in every situation.

Quality & You

Quality must affect every conversation and interaction that we have with peers, subordinates, and leaders; every interaction that we have with co-workers, friends and family. That is why Quality is Everyone’s Business.

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Books by Subir

The Power of LEO
The Ice Cream Maker
The Power of Design for Six
The Power of Six Sigma
Organization 21c

I use word “quality” as a proper noun; quality with a capital “Q”; because the effect of quality should not be limited to a policy or a set of rules. When Quality becomes everyone’s business, we see the outline for a truly transformational experience that shakes the very foundation of our beliefs and behaviors.

My belief is that the pursuit of quality applies to “all the people, all the time.” Quality is not just the organization’s mission – it is a personal responsibility that must be reflected in every aspect of work and life. Again, I say that Quality is a Lifestyle.

Quality happens at all levels of your organization and at all places where vital relationships grow and take hold. Therefore, Quality is active in the way we LISTEN to everyone who has a point to make; when we probe and challenge ourselves and others for ways to ENRICH the deliverables and outputs of the organization; and as we actively OPTIMIZE the experience so and we not only meet, but find way to constantly exceed expectations for whatever client, customer co-workers boss or subordinate we’re interacting with at any given time.

Quality injects a proactive mindset throughout the organization; a self-motivated and independently driven attitude that the potential for success lays in the hands of the individual, not someone else.

In this way, Quality injects a proactive mindset throughout the organization; a self-motivated and independently driven attitude that the potential for success lays in the hands of the individual, not someone else.  If you treat a co-worker or your spouse like a child, don’t expect them to behave like an independently minded, responsibility seeking adult. However, if you empower people with confidence and support, and allow them to voice their ideas and behaviors, then you enhance their ability to uphold the belief that Quality is INDEED everybody’s business.

The Quality Habit

Did you know that people have been trying to define “quality” for more than a thousand years? I found one of the earliest attempts by the Greek philosopher Aristotle from his text the “Nicomachean Ethics.”

Abolish your Quality Department

For decades now, we’ve made the Quality Department the epicenter of our quality policy. But has this attention been misplaced? My contention is that the reason we have failed to deliver resilient and sustainable quality from American businesses is that we are too focused on the metric of quality. We have turned a qualitative question into a quantitative one, and that simply will not work.

What does your mission statement say about quality?

In this bestselling book, Chowdhury introduced his next-generation management system — LEO. In The Power of LEO, he describes how continuous focus on quality improvement can revolutionize any process—from manufacturing operations to managerial decision making. The secret is to cease delegating the responsibility of quality to specific teams or departments and permanently lodge it within the core of an organization’s culture.

What does Quality mean to You?

When I ask people, “what does Quality mean to you?” I hear a wide range of answers. For some people, their answer is, “Quality means putting out the best product or service possible.”  Others may say, “Honesty and trust.” Many will tell you, “Quality means doing the right thing at the right time.” Still others will say, “Quality is a resistance to compromise.” However, more often than not, I still hear “ I have no idea, that’s why we have a quality department,” or “Hey let me ask my Vice President of Quality,” or even worse yet, “I’m not sure what quality means to me.”