by John Guaspari

When it comes to your company's quality initiative, where do you think people in your organization would fall on the spectrum below? Better yet, ask your people to answer the question, having them place themselves along the continuum. Even better still, have them do it again, but not until you leave the room so they will answer honestly.

 What do you suppose you'd find when you returned? My guess is that if they're really being honest, you'd find a reasonably normal, reasonably tight distribution, centered in the general vicinity of compliance. This raises an interesting question: Don't you think you'd be better off if you could move things to the right a bit--toward enthusiasm?

 You can. But to do so, you first have to come to grips with some corners of reality that might be pretty uncomfortable for readers of this august journal.

 Let me state for the record my beliefs about quality:

1. It's beyond dispute that quality (or total quality or TQM or Six Sigma or whatever you call it) represents the most universally applicable, the most logically sound, the most intellectually coherent and rigorous set of principles, practices and tools that any business in any industry has at its disposal to achieve solid, substantial, sustainable improvement in any and all areas critical to that business.

2. To compete, you have to embrace it.

3. It works.

 OK? Have I established my bona fides? I am a friend of quality, a fan of quality, a believer in quality.

 All of that said, I'm reminded of a phone call I received a few years ago from a client. For some time, he had been conscientiously grappling with why people in his company weren't more excited about applying quality tools and principles. It puzzled him: After all, he found quality exciting.

 Then, one day, he had a realization. "I figured it out!" he told me excitedly. "It's because, as a motivator, quality pretty much bites."

 I gamely resisted. I tried to parry his arguments. I tried to understand what had come over him, someone who was (trust me on this) another true believer.

 Then it hit me: He was right. As a motivator, quality does, in fact, bite. And saying so is not an act of quality apostasy; it's simply an acknowledgment of an empirically observable reality. The fact of the matter is that people don't get juiced up by quality. "Accusing" quality of not being a good motivator is like "accusing" Shaquille O'Neal of not being a good jockey: Even phenoms have their limitations, however much we might want them to be able to do everything.

 Why doesn't the pursuit of quality energize people? Because quality is all about defects and limits and specifications and controls. Moreover, it must be about those things; they make quality a discipline and not a fad.

 The problem arises from the fact that such things are felt--not "thought" but "felt," an important distinction--by many people to be tedious and boring at best, insulting and threatening at worst. Although at an intellectual level people understand and accept quality as a discipline of power and majesty, at a deeply evocative level, being part of a quality initiative feels more like a necessary evil. It's like flossing or buying an insurance policy or eating your vegetables: "I know I have to do it, and yes, I know it's good for me. But don't expect me to get excited about it."

 So what to do? Well, the wrong way to frame the challenge is to ask: "What do we need to do to make quality more energizing, more motivating?" It can't be done. (But then, Shaquille O'Neal isn't going to be riding to a Kentucky Derby win any time soon, either.) Rather, it should be framed thusly: "How can we tap into the energy needed to sustain people's efforts, thereby enabling us to (continue to) realize the incomparable benefits that can be realized from a seriously joined, well-wrought quality initiative?"

Seven Steps for Re-Energizing Your Quality Initiative 1. Acknowledge that engendering enthusiasm about quality is both important and difficult to do. Furthermore, acknowledge that to the extent that this is true: (a) actively engaging this question of "Where can that energy come from?" is a purely rational pursuit and (b) not engaging the question is the height of irrationality. This is a significant hurdle, especially in the hyper-rational world of quality. Getting over it may be the most important step you can take. 2. Make it clear and explicit that "maximizing customer value" is the superordinate focus for your organization. The questions "How can we maximize the amount of value we deliver to our customers?" and "How can we make it more likely that they'll give their money to us instead of the other guys?" must permeate all places and activities throughout the organization. This does not diminish the importance of quality; rather, it provides a more receptive climate for its application. 3. Make sure everybody knows who your customers are and what is of value to them. And here, "customer" means the people who pay money for goods and services. Does this mean that it's not important to attend to the needs of so-called "internal customers"? No. But, again, it's essential to draw a distinction between "ends" and "means." Serving internal customers is part of the means. Getting real customers to fork over their money is--or should be--the desired end. 4. Make sure that all employees can be clear and explicit about how they, in doing their jobs, affect the level of value your customers receive. If people: (a) know who your customers are and what is of value to them and (b) have a reasonable degree of process awareness, then with a little bit of work, they can make a direct connection between the two. It's eye-opening and energizing for people to be able to say, "When I do 'X,' customers experience 'Y.'" 5. Make sure that everybody is consciously and explicitly on the lookout for new ways to create and deliver customer value. Said another way, give people a chance to "play." Good things come of this: First, playing with new and creative ideas is fun and energizing, and second, people will come up with good, implementable, customer-value-adding ideas. Give everybody the opportunity. Observation: Sales, marketing and customer service people (i.e., people with regular customer contact) think like sales, marketing and customer service people. This is a tautology, not an insult. It is precisely because the typical accountant or office manager or human resources specialist has never laid an eye on a customer that he or she will be likely to come up with new and profoundly different ideas. When such a person sees such an idea implemented, the energy doesn't just flow: It gushes. 6. Make it clear to people that quality is the foundation on which to build value. 7. Repeat step six.

Customer value is the key to creating enthusiasm

 What do people get excited about? Adding positives, not just eliminating negatives. Making good stuff happen, not just avoiding bad stuff. Using words like "new," "breakthrough," "opportunity" and "creative," not "defects," "limits," "controls" and "specifications."

 It's the promise embedded in these more uplifting concepts that move people toward enthusiasm. Is there something, then, the pursuit of which taps into that embedded promise, while still being fully consistent with the unimpeachable principles and rigor of quality? Yes: the creation of customer value. Why does such a simple, familiar notion provide such leverage? It does so for at least a couple of reasons.

 First, it's face valid. Its importance is inarguable and undeniable. You know all of those "How can we move this into the mainstream of the business?" questions that invariably come up about 18 months into the typical quality initiative? Well, why don't they come up when the issue on the table is the creation and delivery of customer value? Because, simply put, value is what makes customers buy. As such, it's not just in the mainstream of the business; it is the mainstream of the business. People get that, and they get it instinctively. They know that "that's how things work" because they've seen it working that way all their lives in their capacity as customers. They have the first-hand experience to confirm it. It passes the gut test.

 Second, because the idea is evocative. It's about pushing the envelope, not staying within its confines. It's about exploring the possibilities of what might be, not just codifying and routinizing and driving out variability from what is. It's about speaking not just to people's intellects but to their spirits as well.

 And just so we're clear on this: Not a single syllable in the preceding paragraphs should be taken as an attempt to disparage quality. Quality is the ultimate rational pursuit. But when we're talking about moving people toward the right on the enthusiasm spectrum, we're in a dimension that differs in kind from the rational: not the ir-rational, but the extra-rational.

 So how do we reconcile the difference? Where is the nexus between quality and customer value?

Quality is the foundation on which to build value

 Consider the following analogy. Structurally, what's the most important part of a building? Right, the foundation. But when you build your dream house and have your friends over for a visit, do you plow your way through the rhododendrons, the rose bushes and the bark mulch, put the boot to the cement base and proclaim, "Look at that foundation!" No, you focus on the superstructure, on the future that will be created within its walls, on the lives that will be lived inside that house… that home.

 The most important thing you can do to build a solid foundation for your business is to master the tools, practices and principles of quality. Such mastery serves an absolutely essential utilitarian purpose.

 But there must be more to business than utilitarianism. What can give life to that business--what can make a house a home, if you will--is the all-hands exploration and answering of a no-frills, fundamental question: "What do we need to do to get customers to give their money to us instead of to the other guys?"

 The answer, of course, is to deliver more value than the other guys. And that, as we all know, is easier said than done. It calls for knowing your customers at an ever deeper level. It calls for understanding their worlds and how you fit in, a point of view that's roughly 180 degrees out of phase from the way most organizations have traditionally operated. It calls for understanding the alternatives open to your customers--maybe from your traditional competition, maybe from entirely new competitors, maybe from new technologies that suddenly render what you have to offer a whole lot less attractive. It calls for having an entire organization--everybody, not just people in sales, service, marketing and other traditional customer-contact functions--that is sharply attuned to your customers' wants, needs and expectations so that you can be nimble enough to keep up as those wants, needs and expectations inevitably change.

 So it goes. This is a daunting challenge. It's also an inspiriting pursuit, one that will move people toward enthusiasm--if the foundation is solid; if, once value-creating opportunities are identified, your work processes will enable you to deliver; if, that is, you have sufficient quality mastery.

Why is all of this so important now?

 So why make the case now? Hasn't quality served us well?

 Absolutely. We've all seen what quality can do. We've seen its power. We've seen how, just by getting people to compliance, we could reach new levels of organizational excellence and gain a significant competitive edge in the process.

 But those days are gone. By now, everybody has reached compliance. (If they haven't, they'll soon be gone.) The edge now has to come from tapping more deeply into the reservoirs of energy stored in the people in your organization by moving beyond simple compliance to genuine enthusiasm. How? By repositioning quality as a means to an end rather than as an end in itself. If you don't see this as part of the problem, you haven't been paying attention during the past 20 years or so as we've been describing quality as a "philosophical construct" and a "way of life," in effect as the alpha and omega of business enlightenment.

 The goal should be to do what it takes to cause customers to give their money to you rather than to the other guys. This will require mastery of quality, of that there can be no doubt. But in pursuing this goal, people will be applying that mastery in the service of an evocative, inspiriting goal, an extra-rational pursuit that has the ultra-rational advantage of putting them smack into the mainstream of the business.

Isn't this awfully soft and squishy?

 All of this may be a bit much for Quality Digest's heavily left-brained readership. Frankly, I'm a little uncomfortable with it, too. I'm an engineer by training and disposition. So if you had told me, even a few years ago, that I would be espousing positions like these, I would have told you that you were--to use a not-so-terribly left-brained word--nuts. I, too, put a lot of weight in being logical and rational, especially when it comes to the way a business ought to be run. But there is an argument that handles that apparent contradiction, and it begins with this assertion: People are not energized by quality initiatives; they may even be de-energized by them.

 With this being the case, isn't it the height of rationality to deal with the issue head-on? Isn't it supremely logical to try to understand what makes people hunker down around compliance? Isn't it the height of irrationality to look the other way, to behave as though the issue doesn't exist?

 The pursuit of customer value is what can move people toward genuine, energy-releasing enthusiasm. For such a pursuit to be successful, it must be based firmly on quality. But don't ask quality to motivate. It won't work, and it's neither logical nor rational to pretend that it will. Said another way, don't ask Shaq to be your jockey. You'd never find silks that fit, and you'd probably hurt the horse.

About the author

 John Guaspari is founder of Guaspari Associates, a Walpole, Massachusetts-based management consulting firm. His newest book is The Value Effect: A Murder Mystery about the Compulsive Pursuit of 'The Next Big Thing' (Berrett-Koehler, 2000). Contact him at jguaspari@qualitydigest.com . Join his Getting Buy-In discussion group in the Forums area of www.insidequality.com .