Pat Townsend & Joan Gebhardt
EXCLUSIVE ONLINE COLUMNISTS

In July of this year, a group of 30 middle managers attending the introductory class of a certificate course in quality management were asked, "What is the biggest challenge you face today in the quality field?" Virtually all of the attendees were quality professionals in large companies, and all but two worked in companies that currently have some manner of quality process in place. The responses were:

*Changing the culture of the organization

*Building and sustaining union employee commitment

*Working for managers who feel that quality is their subordinates' concern, not their own

*Convincing everyone that quality is the whole process, not one person's fault

*Countering the "quality over quantity" concept

*Ensuring follow-through

*Maintaining previous gains while trying to improve further

What makes this list so disappointing is that it sounds so familiar. The class in question was held in the Detroit area, and the majority of its attendees work for one of the so-called Big Three, which took the brunt of the initial quality challenge from the Japanese. Wouldn't it seem that if any segment of the U.S. economy should have "gotten it" by now, it would be the automobile industry?

The underlying message in the list of challenges is that employees at all levels--from the new minimum-wage worker hired yesterday to the senior executives--need realistic education about what quality is and what it is not and who is responsible for what. The fact that several forests have been denuded for the paper on which to print quality books, articles and lesson plans, reminder books and everything else raises legitimate questions: Who is reading all that stuff, and why haven't they been able to explain it to anyone else?

And, given the enormous amounts of money that have been paid to consulting firms of all sizes to teach thousands upon thousands of classes to people on all rungs of the corporate ladder, who has been attending the classes and why haven't they learned much?

Whenever there is an attempt at communication and the intended listener doesn't understand the message the way the sender meant it, the first place to look for possible problems is at the sender's end of the communications chain. It is primarily the sender's responsibility to ensure that the receiver hears the message the way it was intended. In this case, a major problem has been that the sender has made the message too hard, too complicated, too complex.

Of course, a perfectly valid reason exists for this mystification of the quality message: The amount of money that can be extracted for taking a long time to deliver a difficult, complex message is far higher than the earnings that can be expected for quickly delivering a simple, straightforward message.

The point is that there are two characteristics at play here. A process can be either complex or simple and it can be either difficult or easy. Nuclear science, for instance, is both complex and difficult. Concocting the plot of an Adam Sandler movie is both simple and easy. Quality is simple and difficult. That is, the basic principles are not complex but carrying through with a quality process is not easy--mostly because there are a lot of things that have to be done simultaneously, day in and day out.

With these points in mind, let us go back to the list of challenges.

*Changing the culture of a workplace is not the responsibility of the quality department. It is the responsibility of the senior executives to lead the organization, and the definition of leadership is "the creation of an environment in which others can self-actualize in the process of completing a task." Senior managers, taught in part by their quality department personnel and in part through their own efforts about the necessity and correctness of defining and implementing a quality process, are responsible for creating an environment that will result in a change in culture.

*If the nature of a quality process has been well-explained, it becomes obvious that a quality process offers a union virtually everything the union was initially founded to pursue: respect for individuals, employee participation in the decision-making process, and employee opportunity for greater control of not only their day-to-day operations but also their own destinies. A quality process does not directly address guaranteed pay raises, but a well-constructed quality process will create a bigger pile of money about which to negotiate. If the quality process is well-defined and properly implemented, the only union member with a legitimate fear is the person who handles grievances--his or her job will disappear as workers cooperate with managers to simply solve problems.

*Managers who feel that quality is for their subordinates are being intentionally stupid. The quality department personnel need to approach these folks with facts about the financial benefits of quality. Forget about appealing to their feelings or sense of rightness, overwhelm them with numbers. More than a sufficient number of success stories are available.

*The idea that quality is one person's fault rather than a systems failure is another example of a lack of education. Quality department personnel must continue to educate senior executives (whose retentive powers in this area are apparently shorter than has been assumed)--but they must do so in straightforward, here's-how-much-money-this-is-worth terms.

*"Quality over quantity"--If any executive still believes this, we are back into the realms of intentional stupidity (the executives) and poor communications and teaching skills (the quality department people).

*Follow-through will be ensured if the process and its accompanying education have been well-executed. If the quality process is originally implemented just to get it marked off the corporate checklist, follow-through will be virtually impossible. If folks know at the outset that this is a bottom-line-enhancing activity that will be difficult because they will need to sustain it, odds of follow-through rise noticeably.

*If maintaining past improvements while making further improvements is a problem, it indicates that the previous improvements were either superimposed from above with no attempt to gain the involvement or understanding of the people most affected by the improvement or snuck into place by the people at the lower end of the corporate ladder to avoid bothering the people further up. In either case, when it is time to change processes, one of the key groups has been left unaware of past improvements and, as such, ignores the previous changes. This problem is just one of the many reasons why 100-percent employee involvement is the only logically defendable approach to a quality process.

The definition, implementation and maintenance of a quality process is always going to be difficult precisely because so much needs to be done at the same time. But doing so is not complex, and those who make it so must shoulder a large piece of the blame for the fact that the problems facing today's quality practitioners are the same ones that faced their predecessors 15 years ago.

About the authors

Pat Townsend and Joan Gebhardt have written more than 200 articles and five books, including Commit to Quality (John Wiley & Sons, 1986); Quality in Action: 93 Lessons in Leadership, Participation, and Measurement (John Wiley & Sons, 1992); Five-Star Leadership: The Art and Strategy of Creating Leaders at Every Level (John Wiley & Sons, 1997); Recognition, Gratitude & Celebration (Crisp Publications, 1997); and How Organizations Learn: Investigate, Identify, Institutionalize (Crisp Publications, 1999).