3 tips for never walking past a quality problem
Post date: Wednesday November 19, 2008
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Category: Mike's Blog, Super teams
An MD taught me the meaning of ‘never walk past a quality problem’. Sitting in the reception area of his company’s offices, I saw him park his car and begin walking toward the main entrance. Suddenly he dived into the hedge and emerged with an empty Coke can. It was 7.30 in the morning and the can had obviously been thrown from the nearby main street during the night.
“I refuse to walk past a quality problem, otherwise I have said it is okay,” explained the MD. “If we don’t keep our hedges and car parks clean, visitors will think we don’t pay attention to our products. I can guarantee that, if it wasn’t me, the first staff member to arrive would pick up the Coke can.”
Let’s explore how you may want to follow this principle in your own way.
1) You can define the quality standards.
Imagine you are leading a team and want to set high quality standards. Certainly you must act as a good model, because people will learn from what you do, not what you say. But how can you then get people to deliver the required standards? One approach is to ‘tell it from the top’, instructing people to behave in certain ways. That may be necessary at first, but can lead to a culture where people refuse to think for themselves. Another approach is: a) To set the tone from the top; b) To then involve people in defining the required quality standards; c) To provide the backing they need to deliver these standards.
How to make this happen? After setting the tone, gather the team and invite them to brainstorm the ‘Dos & Don’ts’ regarding all aspects of their quality standards. This can cover, for example, their products, external and internal service and professional behaviour.
Discuss the ideas - but don’t be afraid to say that some things are ‘mandatory’ - and then agree on the standards. Make sure that people get the practical and emotional backing requited to deliver the goods. Try completing the following sentence.
The specific things I can do to
define the quality standards are:
*
*
*
2) You can reward the quality you want repeated.
Every Wednesday the MD I mentioned sent out an email called ‘Weekly Wins’. In addition to business successes across the company, this highlighted ways that people had demonstrated the quality standards.
“It’s easy to report ‘acts of heroism’,” he said. “Like many companies, we have employees who ‘drive through a blizzard from London to Glasgow’ to deliver an important package. Certainly it’s vital to tell these stories, but it’s crucial to highlight the daily acts of people doing things in the right way. So we publicised the efforts of the employees in the boiler room, as well as those on the bridge. This reinforced the quality standards we wanted people to demonstrate each day.”
How can you do this in your own way? Try completing the following sentence.
The specific things I can do to
reward the quality I want repeated are:
*
*
*
3) You can ‘never walk past a quality problem’.
Imagine the scene. Its 9.30 on Monday morning and one team member arrives for a meeting at the office. “What a terrible day,” they announce to the rest of the staff. “The trains are late, the traffic is terrible and later I am due to meet the client from hell. What a way to begin a Monday.” What to do: ignore them, confront them or adopt some other approach? I witnessed such an incident when the leader asked such a team member to leave the room, saying:
“I wonder if you can replay that situation. Everybody has found it hard to get into work, but we want to get on with the job. I would like you to go out – then come in again. This time, think about the impression you are giving to people in the office. I don’t want you to come in with a forced smile, but I do want you to think about the tone you are setting on a Monday morning. Right, do you want to try it? It’s up to you.”
That approach sounds heavy, but it actually worked. The team member smiled wryly, accepted the message and said ‘Sorry’. They left the room and came in again 30 seconds later with a totally different attitude. The leader was not looking for ‘clones’, far from it, but he did want people who behaved professionally. Allowing the situation to have gone unchallenged would have said: ‘It is okay to start the week by infecting other people.’ Team members must be able to express their feelings, but they must also understand the consequences.
You will have your own way of ‘never walking past a quality problem’. This can be relatively ‘easy’ when it applies to physical products or customer service – but it is harder regarding human behaviour. People must get the message that certain actions are encouraged, however, whilst others are unacceptable. Corporate misdemeanours can often be traced back to ignoring people who behaved badly. ‘Reward the behaviour you want repeated,’ is crucial when developing a desired culture – but it is vital to challenge unacceptable behaviour. Try completing the following sentence.
