Quality: Setting Right Goals
Most improvement initiatives are heavily focused on internal goals – increasing productivity/efficiency, eliminating waste, reducing defects/costs and so on. Processes around these goals are written and implemented. People are trained, tools are implemented, energies are directed and everyone starts working hard to meet these goals. Some improvement is seen, some re-alignment is done and it seems to be working fine, till…the customer starts complaining again.
This happens often because of the “internal orientation” of goals. When you establish your processes, pay enough attention to what customers are looking for. Customer A may be looking for impeccable technical quality (features) of deliverable while Customer B may be very sensitive to the quality of communication. Customer C cares a lot about user-friendliness of the product while Customer D is looking for an overall quality of experience delivered. Each one of these customers carry a different perception of quality based on their specific business needs and experiences. The fact that these expectations are fluid and ever-changing adds to the challenge.
If processes are a way to meet business objectives, it pays to identify the right objectives that finely balance internal and customer oriented goals. Internal goals are about continuity of pursuit to remain efficient. External objectives ensure that organization remains absolutely focused on what customer perceives as “value” and ways to deliver that value. With this balance, the focus on customer needs and wants is as much as focus on tools, systems, internal learning and processes. These objectives (and its constant reinforcement) drive people to look for ways to ensure that system is flexible to handle variation in customer demands.
Bottom line:
When defining your processes, do not forget to include the customer. A lot of waste from your practices can be eliminated if you constantly focus on how those practices help you achieve internal and external business objectives.
Gentle Reminder: Don’t forget to focus on your internal customers – your people.
Related Posts at QAspire:
The previous versions of Quality Management Systems in particular and all other management systems in general were inherently inward-looking and had a narrow scope of the concept of quality.
The current versions of these systems, and even international awards in these arena, have since then been systemically aligned with not only the broader quality management discipline but also with the Purpose of the Organization.
On one hand, the quality management professionals are increasingly expected to provide the critical inputs to the competitive strategic discussion forums of the organizations, whereas on the other hand top managements also need to appreciate the potential of the scaled up designs of these systems as a useful general management resource.
In order to these paradigms to become the realities, the perspective of the Performance Review Processes, ingrained in these systems, has to be equally, and simultaneously, outward-looking towards requirements and aspirations of the external stakeholders as well as operating environment.
In particular, the performance review processes should be designed to:
a. Throw up opportunities to innovate [through the continual improvement processes] the development and/or up gradation of its current products /services, processes , distribution channels etc. as well as the measures of the performance and knowledge–sharing mechanisms;
b. Align tightly with other business functions –like finance, marketing, R & D, CSR etc. – which are normally not considered within the scope of the QMS or other equivalent Management Systems;
c. Work in tandem with overall strategic organizational initiatives.
The current versions of these systems do seem to have been adequately designed to scale up the current practices from an inward-looking rear-view mirror to an outward-looking periscope-cum-radar level to become a potential tool for achieving the sustainable competitive advantages.
The quality professionals take the call of the top management in the organizations’ strategic discussion forums as the proof of their pursuits in these regards to have matured from the operations management to general management level.
@Ashok Vaishnav – Thanks for that comment. It actually can become a full bloom blog post.
[…] Quality: Setting Right Goals […]