Roald asks:
> 1. Why is it that people who really want quality
> tend to destroy that movement through a concept called Total Quality
> Management - TQM.?
There is an old Zen joke which says: "lifting my finger thus, and calling
it Kwats, it becomes nothing. Lifting my finger thus and calling it
nothing, it becomes Kwats." There are few operational definitions for TQM
and those that exist (such as QS9000, see more, below) are excessively
prescriptive.
> There are many good elements in the philosophies, methods and tools
> usually connected with this label, but why defocus from the
> real quality improvement processes by focusing so much on the label
> itself, by calling a book the"TQM;An integrated approach " instead of
>"Quality;
> An integrated approach" ? (We have similar developments in use of LO and
>KM)
What we are labeling TQM or KM, or even LO, is simply (or complexly) good
leadership, management, and practice. Albeit, there are many tools and
technologies embedded in the organization which learns and which creates a
quality culture, for the most part, it is belief and practice which
sustain the system.
> 2. How can we explain the success of certification programmes
> like ISO 9000 ? As far as I am informed a great number of companies have
> used incredibly amounts of money and time in the planning and
> preparation for certification. To obtain the certificates and maintain
> them seems to be having a great symbolic importance for many companies.
> Does anyone
> know, based on empiric research, how these certification programmes
> benefit the certified companies in the long run?. In other words which are
> the sustained effects on quality and continuous improvement of quality ?
A company which goes for certification as a method of improving its
processes and systems may well improve. For the most part, the sectors in
which I have worked consider certification as a marketing tool (in
automotive, for instance, QS9000 certification is a requirement of the US
auto companies, a prerequisite to doing business with them) has a
resultant bureaucratic consarnation attached to it. Procedures become
rubrics, process knowledge becomes artifact, creativity becomes
punishable.
Which is not to say that the standards themselves are bad. QS9000, for
example, is a list of best practices and organizational behaviors. The
problem is not with the standard, but with the notion of third party
assessment. As Stephen Covey says, you need total quality people to
create a total quality organization (substitute learning for total
quality, if you will). The assessors are much like Deming's "prevailing
style of management", often working on fear, and working on a comparison
of the system to the last one they liked (regardless of the cultural
differences). The notion of knowledge management (read this as the
deployment of useful knowledge in the context of organizational culture)
is seen more as the classification of knowledge into policy, procedure,
and instruction. The content and deployment is less important to the
assessment than the mere existence of the document. Evidence of
compliance is an observable action and the recording of the results of
that action, whether or not it adds value to the system. Such purported
standards do, indeed, destroy through labeling, by assuming that words and
phrases such as "cross-functional", "team", "continuous improvement", and
even "quality" can be standardized in meaning, as well as action.
Sorry for the rant, I am off to lead a cross-functional team in the
continuous improvement of my own QS9000 system that we may comply with
revision 3 by January!!
John F. Zavacki
jzavacki@greenapple.com <mailto:jzavacki@greenapple.com>
--"John Zavacki" <jzavacki@greenapple.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>