Quality Hostile Assumptions

     Management consultant David Nadler and other writers have
noted that as many as seven out of ten organizations in the
private sector that have espoused Total Quality Management have
failed to incorporate it into their operations.  They have, in
other words, only given lip service to quality without altering
their cultural values, dooming themselves ultimately to failure. 
Nadler cites the following þquality-hostileþ assumptions he finds
in such organizations (adapted by D4 to government settings):

1.  We're smarter than our customersþwe know what they
really need.

2.  Quality is not a major factor in customer decisionsþthey
usually can't tell the difference

3.  Our primary and overriding purpose is to log near term
achievements that this administration can point to at elec-
tion time.

4.  Our market is our bosses and the Congress, not the
American public.

5.  The primary way to influence agency and department
performance is through skillful budgeting and creative
accounting.

6.  It costs more to provide a high quality product or
service, and we won't recover the added costs.

7.  We will never be able to compete with the private sector
in anything; we're not good enough.

8.  Managers are paid to make decisions; workers are paid to
do, not to think.

9.  Strategic success comes from large one-time innovative
leaps, rather than from continuous improvement.

10.  The job of senior management is strategy, not opera-
tions or implementation.

11.  The key skills for senior managers are political know-
how, knowing how to compete and win, and budget manipula-
tion.

12.  To err is humanþperfection is not an attainable or
realistic goal.

13.  Quality improvement can be delegatedþit is something
that the top can tell the middle to do to the bottom.

14.  Never spend time looking at failures; there isn't much
to be learned from them, and it's demoralizing.

15.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.


Provided by Tom Glenn, TQM BBS, 301-585-1164