The Collapse of Prevailing Wisdom

Manage your improvement processes by facts, not belief.

There is a big difference between wisdom and knowledge. Wisdom can be defined as intuitive beliefs and understanding. Knowledge, on the other hand, is information that is backed up by statistically sound research. Often, as we gain knowledge, the wisdom of the past is proven wrong.

Many of the practices that we had considered to be basic principles of total quality management (TQM) proved to be ineffective or detrimental under some conditions. It takes a different set of activities and beliefs to move a low-performing organization up to the medium-performance level than it does to take a medium-performing organization and move it up to the high-performance level. A different set of activities and beliefs needs to be implemented to keep the high-performing organizations performing at the high level.

Low-performing organizations need to concentrate on the basics. They should focus on a few critical areas and try to improve customer relationships.

Clear, concise attention to fundamental processes such as customer service, operations, and cost controls is essential. It’s important that these organizations build and strengthen their infrastructure to build for the future.

Following is a list of management practices that could get low-performing organizations into trouble:

• Emphasizing quality when assessing senior managers

• Encouraging widespread participation in quality meetings

• Using world-class benchmarks

• Emphasizing technological forecasting or competitor activities to identify new products

• Emphasizing technology considerations for selecting vendors

• Relying on surveys to obtain feedback from customers

• Regularly using business partners as a source of process technology

• Emphasizing empowerment

• Using geographical expansion as the strategy for future growth

• Removing quality control inspection

• Benchmarking marketing and sales processes

Medium-performing organizations need to focus their efforts on improving their processes and establishing good measurement systems. Focusing on applying business process improvement to critical processes allows these companies to make significant improvements in quality while reducing costs and cycle time. These companies should increase their communication related to the importance of quality through widespread participation in meetings devoted to quality issues. Developing and communicating mission and vision statements provides increased trust and direction for the organization.

Following is a list of management practices that could get medium-performing organizations into trouble:

• Emphasizing quality and team performance in assessing senior management

• Increasing hours of training in general knowledge topics

• Selecting suppliers based upon their general reputation

• Using cross-functional teams or teams with customers on them to create design specifications

• Shifting primary responsibilities for compliance with quality standards away from the quality assurance function

• Downsizing the business by offering fewer services

• Focusing on cost reduction to make decisions about acquiring technologies

To stay ahead of the competition, high-performing companies must be able to predict what the competition is going to do and what future customer requirements will be. These companies need to focus on developing advanced technologies and empowering their employees to increase their personal creativity. Process improvement tools like benchmarking and business process improvement become key elements in their continuous quest for increased quality, productivity, and profitability.

Following is a list of management practices that could get high-performing organizations into trouble:

• Increasing participation in department improvement teams

• Making education and championing a primary role for the quality assurance function

• Focusing technology on production processes

• Relying on customer surveys as a primary input for improvement

There is no universal best practice combination that is applicable to all organizations. As organizations strive to improve, the differences in their customers, competitors, and products require that different management practices be deployed to optimize the organizations’ overall performance. Unfortunately, there is no one right answer for all companies.

About the author
H. James Harrington is CEO of the Harrington Institute Inc. and chairman of the board of e-TQM College Advisory Board. Harrington is a past president of ASQ and IAQ. He has more than 55 years of experience as a quality professional and is the author of 28 books. Visit his web site at www.harrington-institute.com.