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Four Phases of a Quality Process

by Pat Townsend
and Joan Gebhardt

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Like the phases of the moon, a quality process has identifiable and sequential phases of its own. The first three of these were articulated by Jeff Pym, who led and observed the implementation of a successful quality process in one division of a large company. The fourth phase was added three years later by Joe McConville while administering the process from the company’s main office.

Quality processes evolve through definite steps:

*  What can you do for me?

*  What can I do for me?

*  What can I do for you?

*  What can we do together?

This sequence holds true for both individuals and groups, although the speed at which they progress through the four phases varies considerably. Some people, prepared to trust an organization’s senior management, can begin at the third or fourth phase. Others, perhaps more cautious from their experiences of previous programs, may remain in phase one for months on end.

No matter how well-defined a quality process is, or how deeply committed a senior management team, organizations are still made up of individuals who must each make personal commitments if the quality effort is to succeed. Senior managers should know that, while they cannot expect everyone to react at the same speed, they can expect the same sequence of acceptance. This knowledge encourages them to applaud those taking the lead rather than fussing at those proceeding more cautiously.

As a rule of thumb, the length of time that people stay in the first phase--What can you do for me?--is inversely proportional to their emotional (and, often, geographical) distance from the organization’s hub. Put more bluntly, the announcement of a new initiative by the home office is not always greeted with rampant enthusiasm by troops in the field who, according to collective memory, have seen a lot of programs come and go. No one should be surprised when a salesperson located 1,500 miles from headquarters says, "Until someone actually does something which removes a procedure that makes life hard for me, you can count me as a spectator.” By the same token, depending on the organization’s past history, the psychological distance between the first and fourth floors of a headquarters building may be every bit as great as the distance from one coast to the other.

Initially, the first phase doesn’t seem to fit very well into a corporate agenda. In order to accept a new program or process, an organization's members must be able to see something in the new procedures that will benefit them personally. If the answer to "What can you do for me?" is "Nothing," the next questions in the sequence won't even come up.

Fortunately, in most workplaces there are optimists who see quality as a way to control their day-to-day activities. "Hey, someone actually used quality to eliminate that stupid procedure," is a powerful inducement for first-phasers to venture deeper into the process.

The second phase--What can I do for me?--while still self-centered, represents the beginning of activism. It’s the realization that they can effect changes and share in the decision making that convinces people to become quality enthusiasts.

When the workload is a continual challenge to keep up while staving off problems, no one has the time or inclination to help others fight their battles. But once personal distractions are removed, individuals and teams can begin to reach beyond their immediate borders. Then the move to the third phase--What can I do for you?--is an incremental and logical one.

This phase is long-lasting. There is a seemingly neverending list of things that people want in the way of service. Yet, in the interaction between customer and supplier lie the seeds of phase four, What can we do together? At the company where this sequence was first articulated, the fourth phase emerged in 1988 during a Baldrige application process. More than 75 percent of the organization’s quality teams had communication and training goals, and were looking for ways to partner with other teams. That same year, partnering gained national attention when Motorola won one of the first Baldrige awards.

Once the majority of the people and units within an organization reach the fourth phase, a company's quality process can be considered mature. Caution: "Mature" and "frozen in place" are not synonymous. What we can do together today is different than what we could do together yesterday and what, if we act together today, we can do tomorrow.

About the authors

Pat Townsend and Joan Gebhardt have written more than 200 articles and four books: 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); and Recognition, Gratitude & Celebration (Crisp Publications, 1997). Contact them at ptownsend@qualitydigest.com.

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