TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT: THE FORMULA FOR SUCCESS by Tom Glenn "You manage things, and you lead people." In these words, Grace Hopper has given us the most succinct definition of Total Quality Management I know. In a way, her words are a formula for success in Total Quality Management, for she has offered us equal but different approaches to things and people. Things can be manipulated, quantified, measured, and calculated; people can't. Using Commodore Hopper's formulation, when I work with people, I put aside numbers and rely instead on judgment, understanding, compassion, wisdom, and--yes --inspiration. By distinguishing between managing and leading, Hopper has given us to understand clearly that you can't lead things or manage people. She's right. Hopper's formulation is global, pitched at a high level of granularity. We are inclined to agree with it almost instinctively without having the foggiest notion of what it means in the day-to-day world. We feel like Calvin Coolidge's wife asking what the preacher had said about sin. "He said," Coolidge told her tersely, "he was against it." Now that we know that, what do we do? In hopes of clearing away some of the fog, I offer a formulation that, I believe, says the same thing as Hopper's version but says it one notch down in granularity pecking order. It's still lofty enough to sound impressive (you can use it with your boss) but practical enough that we can do something with it. It goes like this: C + L t1 + t2 = TQM ...that is, Customer focus + leadership + teams + tools = Total Quality Management Customer Focus Customers? Us? The notion of "customer" is as foreign to many of us bureaucrats as the idea of a bicycle is to a fish. We think of a customer as someone who buys something. In Total Quality Management, the word "customer" has taken on a new meaning: the beneficiary of our work. Beneficiaries may be people or organizations; they may be citizens or they maybe the people at the next desk or in the next office. Beneficiaries outside our organizations are called "external customers;" those within, "internal customers." Their designation as internal or external matters little. The point is that all we do is for their sake; without them, our work has no purpose. Therefore, if we are serious about quality, customers, no matter whether they are internal or external, have every right to have their requirements, needs, and expectations met the first time and every time. So all definitions of quality --in the sense that Total Quality Management people use the word --state or imply the same orientation: giving the customers what they want. Len Nadler says that quality is an offering that meets or exceeds customer requirements. Joe Juran defines quality as fitness for use--an artistically terse way of saying the same thing. Stew Leonard, the famous dairy entrepreneur in Norwalk, Connecticut frames the issue in earthy terms we all can understand: Rule 1: The customer is always right! Rule 2: If the customer is ever wrong, reread rule 1. These definitions of quality imply two properties: (1) freedom from defect (the negative aspect), and (2) pleasing the customer (the positive aspect). In creating a product, a service, or a piece of knowledge, the two aspects must receive equal attention. Accentuating the Negative In the federal government, we have tended to accentuate the negative--getting rid of the defects (often under the name of "productivity," "zero defects," or "quality control")--without much attention to the positive--finding ways to please the customer. As a consequence, we have tended to become narrowly focussed on issues like specifications and tolerances and overlooked obvious factors like simple courtesy; arranging the work process for the comfort of the customer rather than ourselves; and getting the product, service, or knowledge to the customers when we promised it--or better yet, when they want it. When government becomes dysfunctional, bureaucrats begin to look down on the customer as an ignorant nuisance. If our customers are in a rival agency, we may ignore them, make them wait, and tell them what they need. If they are in the general public, we patronize them. If they are in a different branch of government, we obfuscate, generalize, and delay, hoping they will just go away. We forget that in the public sector, unlike the private sector, we don't have the luxury of losing our customers; our customers, like the poor, we have always with us. One of the worst things we can do is turn them into enemies. Changing the Culture We need, in short, to alter the way we think about our customers. An unspoken underlying assumption of Total Quality Management is a reverence for people. That means starting out with the assumption that others (customers, suppliers, and subordinates included) are worthy people, both honest and competent. It means treating them that way. Most people respond to trust with trust, once they get past the suspicious wariness that our normal way of managing has bred in them. Most people react to trust by behaving in honest and competent ways. A few-- about three percent--will not. We would do well to shape our behavior for the 97 percent. What I am talking about here is transforming the organizational culture so that in all we do, the customer is foremost in our minds. That means that our continuous improvement efforts are aimed at quality as defined by our customers, not saving money or becoming more efficient. If we stress quality, cost and efficiency take care of themselves. In a quality culture, quality (meeting the customers needs, expectations, and requirements the first time and every time) becomes a way of life, an obsession. Customers All So how do we create and institutionalize an obsession for pleasing customers? First, by treating our own subordinates as people worthy of reverence--that is, as internal customers. We must assume that they are honest and competent people whose requirements are valid. The way the people in an organization feel is the way their external customers are going to feel. Second, by asking the customers what they want. If our customers are honest and competent people, they are perfectly capable of expressing their valid needs, although we may have to negotiate with them to translate those needs into measurable terms we can work to fulfill. We can ask customers what they want, need, and expect through surveys, focus groups, having our representatives on the front line talk to them, setting up customer hot lines, and encouraging them to write us letters. Both of these steps, revering subordinates and asking for customers' evaluation, are scary. Both are likely to make us hear things we'd rather not hear. I didn't say this was easy. LEADERSHIP Leadership, as Eisenhower said, is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. It all starts with a vision--a dream, an image of the world that is different from the way the world is today and better. A leader with an arresting vision and strong commitment to that vision will find a way to spark in others a desire to bring that vision into reality. The leader will find a way to build trust, to communicate, to inspire. Doing and Talking Leaders excite other people by communication. They communicate in about every way you can think of. But two kinds of communication are characteristic of leaders: action and inspiration. Leaders, in general, would rather do than talk. Witness Gandhi. When they do talk, they do so with a conviction that moves people. Witness Martin Luther King. Their doing and their speaking spring from the rivetting power of the vision they hold in their heads and share with others. Traits of Leaders Leaders come in all shapes, sizes, ages, and genders. What they have in common in addition to their galvanizing vision are positiveness, passion, and humility. They are positive in the sense that they believe in people and the possibility of making things better; they are not cynical. They are passionate in the sense that they deal with commitment, meaning, and belief--those human qualities which change history and make people willing to sacrifice to reach a cherished goal. Leaders reach beyond mere facts (by definition things of the present and the past) to the what-could-be, to facts which have not yet come into existence. Leaders, when they are leading, are humble people. We Americans, with our culture of rugged individualism, tend to doubt the humility of leadership. We point to the egotism of an FDR or the pride of a Napoleon. But the key phrase is "when they are leading." Leaders are not saints. They are the most ordinary of people with all the flaws we all have. Pride is a very common flaw. When leaders are leading, their focus is outside of themselves, on the goal--the vision they are committed to. In those times, they are humble. I am reminded of the words of Lao Tzu-- Fail to honor people, They fail to honor you; But of a good leader, who talks little, When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, They will all say, "We did this ourselves." Unlike the other elements of Total Quality Management, leadership cannot be expressed as a recipe, an algorithm, a set of instructions, or a pattern. On the other hand, the capacity for leadership is widespread in the human population. The only way I know to learn to lead is to watch other leaders and to develop in myself those virtues I observe during the leadership process. TEAMS The Litmus Test of Quality Once we know what the customers want and understand the gaps between their requirements and our performance, we are ready to charter quality improvement teams to start into the improvement process. Quality improvement teams using the prescribed statistical tools are the hallmark of Total Quality Management. An organization which can boast that 10 percent of its people are on teams at any given time has successfully begun the Total Quality Management journey. An organization that has 60 to 80 percent of its people on teams at any given time has completed the cultural transformation to quality. Origins and Actions A quality improvement team is a group of five to eight people drawn from across the organization (not all from one element unless the task is not cross-functional) who are the experts in the work process--that is, they are the people who actually do that work. They are chartered by the Quality Council (itself a quality improvement team made up of the top five to eight people in the organization) to solve a particular problem or improve a work process. They meet, typically, once a week for an hour. They study the work process assigned them using the tools described in the next section, discover ways to improve the process, propose their improvement to the Quality Council, test their solutions, pilot their solutions, and finally implement them. Teams Implement Quality improvement teams' role in implementing change, rather than just recommending change, makes them unique in management praxis. Implementation is fun. I hear the same story again and again from team members operating in both the public and private sector: "Until you've been given a chance," they tell me, "to analyze your work process, find out how to improve it, and then implement your own recommended changes, you don't know how much fun work can be." Results Do quality improvement teams really achieve results? A team at Florida Power and Light saved the company $450,000 a year in cash flow by eliminating billing delays. A team at Xerox saved the corporation $4.4 million by streamlining construction and distribution of price lists. At Motorola, a team found a way to reduce the time to fill orders from 45 days to two hours. And at the Tactical Air Command, a team decreased the time to process travel vouchers from six weeks to less than five minutes. Why? Teams work so well for two reasons. First, when organized and managed properly, they are the best means yet discovered to solve work problems and improve work processes. Second, they cause people to take ownership of their work, take pride in their achievements, and--to use Deming's phrase--to take joy in their work. Teams are, in other words, the best way we know of to empower people. Teams working on cross-functional processes, those that cut across the organization and involve several work units, reap the greatest benefits, at least in the beginning. A disproportionate share of organizational problems lie between the cracks--at the cross-over point between work units where misunderstanding, hostilities, rivalries, and everyday run-of-the-mill indifference stunt quality and make re-work a standard procedure. Team Requisites None of this happens overnight. Before we can charter quality improvement teams and expect them to succeed with the kind of dazzling results I mentioned earlier, organization members must believe that they can trust management. Beyond that, once teams are chartered, they need four things: training, facilitation, leadership, and support. Training is in four aspects: skills (being sure that the people know how to do their jobs right the first time and every time), the statistical tools (the touchstone of Total Quality Management), interpersonal dynamics (we are culturally rugged individualists; we often do not know how to work effectively together), and the principles of Total Quality Management. Without effective training in each of these aspects, quality improvement teams can be expected to fail. Facilitation is a skill that requires special training. It means, simply put, helping a group get where its going. It does not mean telling the group where it should be going. That, arguably, is the leader's job. A good facilitator only does two things: (1) helps the group through interpersonal bogs and impasses, and (2) offers help with the techniques and tools of Total Quality Management. As members of an organization become more experienced in working in teams, facilitation becomes less important. In the beginning, it is often critical to success. Teams also need leadership. Not management. Leadership. A good team leader pulls the team along in the direction it already wants to go. Where the facilitator must be neutral, the leader is passionately involved in the outcome. The leader is able to hold up a beacon pointing the direction, lighting the route, saying over and over to the team members, "Just look what we can accomplish if we work together!" Team leadership is also a skill, but if the leader is passionately committed to the team's goal, the requisite skill will generally emerge. Finally, teams need the visible support of top management. So in the most successful Total Quality Management organizations, the Quality Council meets regularly with the teams to see how they are coming, to show their interest, and to learn from the teams. The face-to-face meeting absolves the team of requirements to write up reports (a real pitfall for teams) and truly empowers the teams by a demonstration that top management will take the time to listen and to encourage. Quality Council's Role Support from the Quality Council is decisive in the success of quality improvement teams. Skilled management (as well as leadership) will make the difference. Support begins with a well-crafted charter consisting of a problem statement and a mission statement. Both statements must be precise, devoid of emotional language, in principle quantifiable, and well thought through. The problem, for example, might be: "Travel vouchers are now requiring 45 days to process, and customers (employees) are complaining." The mission statement might be: "Reduce travel voucher processing time by 50 percent." Bounds and Freedom The bounds of authority and responsibility of the team must be clear. A common set of limitations on teams is: "(1) No additional funding; (2) no additional people; (3) any internal rule can be changed." Within those boundaries, the freedom of the team must be absolute. The team should not be given a deadline, but (during the first stages of the Total Quality Management journey, at least) the Quality Council should shape the team's charter so that the job will not take longer than six months or so to complete. The council should encourage the team to come back to council if the problem and mission seem to be off the mark. Sometimes, the team and council will need to negotiate on just what the problem is and precisely which mission the team will undertake. Paramount is that the mission be clearly linked to quality--that is, improving our ability to meet the requirements, expectations, and needs of some body of customers. The mission cannot, therefore, be merely cost-cutting or greater efficiency; the mission must be a customer-driven task. "We have met the enemy..." The Quality Council, if it does its job well, will not be faced with turning down a proposal from a quality improvement team. Turning down a proposal once is a setback; turning down a proposal twice is a defeat; turning down a proposal a third time is surrender to the enemy--and the enemy is usually us. The council, in other words, needs to stack the deck for success. If the mission and problems statements are carefully crafted; the team is well trained, led, and facilitated; and the organization is dedicated to quality, turn-downs never turn up. TOOLS Total Quality Management tools address the "management" side of Hopper's equation. They work, in other words, on things, not people. The tools and their application follow the same rigors as the scientific method; in fact the same thought trains used in the null hypothesis are used in the application of Total Quality Management tools. This is not the place to describe the tools in detail, but I can give you the names of the best known ones. With the exception of brain storming and the Fishbone diagram, all of them are statistical. The most common are Pareto analysis, scatter diagrams, histograms, run charts, box plots, and control charts. They are not difficult. Sixth graders in Japan (and in a few school districts in the U.S. as well) learn them as a matter of course. Something for Everybody Easy or not, as every one of the quality experts around the world has emphasized, they cannot be dispensed with. The tools remain a necessary ingredient in Total Quality Management. That means that, in the long run, everybody has to learn them. I stress this point because I work with organizations that conclude incorrectly that team members need to learn the tools, but managers do not. Once again: everyone needs to learn the tools. I didn't promise this would be easy. Clearing the PHOG Once the tools are shared knowledge among all members of the organization, management by fact rather than by PHOG (prophesy, hearsay, opinion, and guess) becomes routine. Moreover, the clarity of thinking the tools offer becomes a part of the daily conversation. Eavesdrop at a Marriott hotel, Florida Power and Light, or the Ogden IRS Service Center. You'll hear what I mean. C + L + t1 + t2 = TQM These then are the elements for success in Total Quality Management: focus on the customer, teams, tools, and leadership. Very simple. I didn't promise it would be easy. Copyright The Bureaucrat Magazine, 1992