I recently read a report from the Conference Board Quality Council, A Leadership Prescription for the Future of Quality, that provoked a rant. So here it is.
It bugs me when TQM, Six Sigma, Lean, re-engineering, and Baldrige are treated as competing models rather than pieces of the same puzzle. The frame of the puzzle is the Baldrige Criteria, but all the other models fit nicely inside. It particularly irks me how, in the last few years, quality publications seem to be all about process improvement, leaving management off the hook for creating a strategic context and priorities for process improvement. I always took at this trend as “do as I say, not as I do.” Management can keep on being political and reactive, while telling the folks down in the trenches to change.
Well, that approach just doesn’t cut it. In the report from the Conference Board, the authors tell quality professionals they must “view themselves as more of a macro-leader, directly connecting their quality practices to business trends and top-line growth.” Better yet, the management team should lead quality; they can start by dusting off Deming’s Fourteen Points and the Baldrige Criteria.
Let’s get specific. The following are the “quality pitfalls" the authors identify, as well as my take on how they are avoided if quality is a management system within an organization (i.e. if an organization follows Deming's advice and applies Baldrige criteria).
Emphasizing process over results – It is no accident that the Baldrige Criteria assign 360 points out of 1,000 to one of the seven categories: Results. No matter how elegant your processes are, if they don’t produce strategic results, you have nothing.
Mis-aligning limited resources by working on lower-value items – A company could lose a lot of money doing less important things well. The Baldrige Criteria specifically ask “how do Senior Leaders create a focus on action to accomplish the organization's objectives?” The most common impediment to success is lack of focus. When management commits to too much, nothing gets done. In Deming’s words, management must create “constancy of purpose.”
Diluting key measures that drive action aligned to bottom-line results – Baldrige Category 4 can solve this problem. I could quote several requirements, but for starters, how about 4.1 a(3): “how do you keep your performance measurement system current with business needs and directions?” A corollary to my assertion that the most common cause of failure is taking on too much is that the most common flaw in performance measurement is measuring too much. When everyone is frantically collecting data, there is no time to use it. Measurement systems with a lot of stuff no one cares about soon perish, along with the important measures that are obscured by volume.
Implementing measures that drive conflicting or bad behavior – Let’s lateral the ball to Dr. Deming on this one. His tenth point of fourteen says: “eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships.” Not much commentary needed here, but I will add that the Baldrige Criteria require systematic review of measurements and their effects.
Delegating quality leadership to departments, leading to lack of responsibility – Deming’s Fourteen Points are not addressed to the people who are low on the “depth chart.” All fourteen are the responsibility of top management. Many, if not everyone in the organization, should be involved, but there is no delegation in the Fourteen Points. “Management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.”
Acting as if quality is a destination rather than a sustaining, cultural norm – Point five of fourteen does the job here: “improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.” Lest we neglect the Baldrige Criteria, there is an entire item dedicated to workforce engagement with Deming’s “new philosophy.”
Dismissing past knowledge versus evolving lessons learned into continuous improvement – Quoting Joan Rivers, “don’t get me started.” It used to be only Americans who wanted to know “what is the latest” rather than “what is the best.” Now the world has caught our affliction. The whole “flavor of the month” thing is a symptom of wanting to move on, rather than build on. TQM is almost a dirty acronym now, rather than an important movement that came and went not because of flawed concepts but because the concepts were not adopted at all levels.
Deploying quality without context and expectations – To this point, I say "I rest my case." It’s "back to the future" for organizations to thrive. Process quality outside of organizational quality can save some bucks in a thriving economy in which stockholders simply don’t care about horizons over one year. But to dig out of an economic hole or sustain success for stakeholders, a systems approach must be extended to the big picture and the model for doing that is right on the shelf; dust it off and “just do it.”
Want to see a real-world example of how the Baldrige model addresses these "quality pitfalls"? Read a Case Study about the City of Coral Springs, a 2007 Baldrige recipient (and my previous employer).
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