//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.

Empowering People Power

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.”

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.

Make Quality a Lifestyle Choice

A few years ago, a colleague of mine was driving his car and hit a big pothole in the road. He stopped the car to make sure everything was okay. The car was fine, but at some point, he must have dropped his wallet, because when he got home he couldn’t find it. Sure, he had some money and credit cards in there, but he said that he also had some pictures of his family, and was devastated to think that he’d never get them back.

Resistance to Compromise

In the food profession, Chantal Coady is a superstar. How did she get there? Chantel was never satisfied with anything until it was perfect—good enough was never enough. She was always passionate about chocolate, even as a child. When she was old enough to work, Chantel took a part-time job in the chocolate department at Harrod’s, the famous department store in London.