Pat Townsend & Joan Gebhardt
EXCLUSIVE ONLINE COLUMNISTS

In the February Quality Digest interview marking his 94th birthday, Joseph Juran did the quality community a great service by not dodging the question when he was asked for his opinion of the ISO 9000 series of quality management standards and derivatives such as QS-9000 and AS9000. His remarks can most closely be compared with those of the little boy who cried, "But, Momma, the Emperor is naked!"

His answer may, in fact, serve to mark the peak of the standards' popularity as the comments will probably free many silent-to-date critics to loudly voice their doubts and criticisms. It is easier for everyone (these authors included) to detail their hesitations about ISO 9000 when someone of Juran's stature has already torn down the hazy screen that has obscured so many people's views.

Perhaps the key statement in Juran's remarks is his view that ". adherence or certification to ISO 9000 doesn't ensure that a company will become a quality leader. There's no proof." That lack of proof forms the solid foundation of Juran's comments--and the criticisms of so many others.

Juran also points out three cornerstones of the efforts of true quality leaders that are not even addressed in ISO standards: ". training the hierarchy in how to manage quality, revolutionary rate of improvement year after year, providing for participation from the work force." The most accurate assessment of ISO 9000 available is contained in his next sentence, "From my viewpoint, if somebody adheres to ISO 9000 and doesn't go any further, it almost assures that they will not be quality leaders, because they're missing these vital ingredients."

Few people will argue with the proposition that ISO 9000 is a good enough place to begin if an organization has not previously done anything else in the field of quality. However, if an organization is at the starting point, why begin with a system that they know can't get them where they need to be to compete? Why not start with an approach that can be customized and continued year after year, with ever-improving goals?

ISO 9000 and its clones have had one provable impact: Enriching the ISO organization and numerous consulting firms--particularly the consultants and registrars who have mutual-recommendation pacts, assuring that both score well at the bank, no matter what the client's quality score. In fact, there are reports that ISO is currently grappling with how to regulate those relationships.

It is virtually impossible to find anyone in an ISO 9000-registered organization who doesn't have horror stories to tell about the incredible waste of time and effort that appears to be an integral part of ISO 9000 registration. Yet, so far, the process has thrived. A logical question is "Why?" The answers are fairly simple: It may be expensive, but an executive need only spend the company funds, not his or her own time. In addition, the "quality department" and its senior manager in an ISO 9000-pursuing company are lazy.

Not lazy in the sense of trying to get out of doing work. After all, it isn't easy to fill out all those forms and keep all those charts and try that hard to conform to the standards that someone else has set at some point in the (hopefully recent) past. No--lazy in the sense of not wanting to learn more about a complete quality process, one that goes past the strictly rational, number-checking, check-list-numbering efforts of the old quality control days and actually considers things like humanity, emotions, continual improvement, customers and establishing new, oft-changing goals.

Among those who deserve a large share of the blame for ISO 9000's current popularity is the American Society for Quality, with its large population of quality control advocates who were so very uncomfortable with the holistic quality approaches (such as the Baldrige Award) advocated in the mid-to-late 1980s. ISO 9000 has allowed them to reassert the primacy of charts and paperwork, and relegate leadership and participation to supporting, when-there-is-time roles. It is a sad irony that the organization which should be leading the quality movement would support an approach that wastes so much time and energy. Frederick Taylor would love ISO 9000.

When ISO 9000 first became popular in the United States, there was a rumor that "ISO" was an acronym for a phrase in some language that, when translated, meant "European trade barrier." Now it appears more likely that the truer translation of ISO would be "international quality barrier."

Once the little boy said out loud that the emperor had no clothes, the rest of the people viewing the parade soon began to laugh as the tailors who had sold the emperor on the special cloth and the emperor who had been gullible enough to buy the clothes became objects of derision.

Thank you, Dr. Juran. Let the laughter begin.

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).