[SysOp note: the following is the text of seven-part message left by Bob Moran on the TQM BBS (301-585-1164) on 3 February 1994. I've received several requests for retransmissions of the text and one suggestion that it be made a file here on the board. So here it is. Address your reaction to Bob Moran at the TQM BBS or (via Internet) to tqm.list@tqm.permanet.org. THE "M" IN TQM This is part one of a bunch of parts: Beginning the description, the agreement on leadership... Managers work on systems. Others work within systems. The step-by-step integration of the quality disciplines into the daily routine, into the core of the organization's soul is the management challenge. The integration is time consuming. A lifetime, maybe more, maybe forever. But, then, TQM is not a thing, not a place. It is a process, a journey, from where we are to excellence; a process of never ending improvement to a never attainable end: perfection. There is no one road. The road to continuous improvement is unique for each reality. It is personal--personal for those on the journey, which is everyone in the organization, including managers. But for a manager it is more. It is tests of stamina, courage, and faith; it is challenges in style and skill. It demands adaptation. Continuous improvement, continuous change; not the same, not that far apart. More than anything, TQM depends on people and people are not managed. They are led. Tom has described leadership. He will not find argument with me. However, all those who lead, are not managers. Leaders arise from any quarter. All those who have the title, the position, the responsibility, the boss's offspring in his or her bed, are not managers. Neither management nor leadership is bestowed by title, position, responsibility, or vows. The differences Tom describes are the differences between supervising and leading, between boss and leader. (And boss is bestowed.) From anywhere, one can lead. One who takes the initiative, leads. One who demonstrates taking the initiative, more than leads. He or she develops leaders. Demonstrating commitment, the same. One who lives the belief, leads by example and empowers others to do the same via the very act of demonstration as well as via the transference of power. Empowered employees can establish clear, attainable goals. Managers and employees, leaders all, can genuinely agree on those goals in theory and in practice because they are committed to improvement; improvement in their jobs, in the processes they touch, in the products they produce, and in themselves. Deming, Juran, Glenn, teach us continuous improvement is slave to individuals and groups learning from error. Error is shown from comparisons: the actual versus the expected. Unbridled by fear, in concert with leaders, mistakes are teachers. Peer leaders and managers who lead; encourage, coach, and recognize--for the real victory in the process of continuous improvement is not the correction the error, but the learning from it. This is part two of a bunch of parts: Continuing the description; transition from leadership to management, systems... Along the road to perfection are obstacles and barriers. Removal is essential. Who identifies them? Managers? Probably not--stinks of patronage. Leaders empower workers to identify the problems, but it is often left to managers and workers, working together, to remove barriers and obstacles. Leaders encourage the work, facilitate it, empower workers, and transfer ownership. Workers do the work, take ownership of the processes, and change the processes. But it is management that creates that system, that environment that allows, encourages, and, eventually, breeds this outstanding performance. Awareness is people change, a job for leadership, and awareness is the result of systematic modification, a job for management. TQM requires individual awareness of the need to improve, awareness of the promise of the quality road, awareness of the philosophy of continuous improvement, and awareness of the tools and methods one employs in implementation. Leaders can bring people to the road; leaders can share their knowledge and experience for adaptation to the journey, but it is management that provides and ensures. Management ensures that workshops and conferences are there and accessible, that the TQM body of literature is enmeshed in the corporate psyche, that higher level management is attune to the changes, that there are mechanisms for horizon communication throughout the organization, that there are mechanisms that assure goals communicated downward are aligned with resources needs communicated upward, and that customers and suppliers are brought into the processes within the system. Open, honest communication creates the environment in which TQM flourishes. The absence of open, honest communication assures a stunted growth, if not a demise for quality. Leaders knows this. Leaders communicate openly and honestly. Leaders know they must spend a lot time listening, asking questions, and acting on answers. It is not simply that everyone knows what he or she needs to know. People are stilted in such an environment. Continuous improvement is a "nonstarter" in an organization where everyone does not know everything. People need to know the vision, the organizational goals, the supervisor's objectives, the multiple agenda, and what is coming down the road. It is only in such an environment that people feel respected, trusted, and secure enough to offer the total, open, honest communication essential to TQM. It is in only in such an environment where suggestions for improvement can be relevant. Only systematic change and managerial commitment can create the mechanisms that can assure that clear lines of communication are open throughout the organization and that they are open and functioning vertically as well as horizontally. This is the end of part two. --- This is part three of a bunch of parts: Continuing the description; management as umbrella, constancy of purpose... Up to now, a manager has been working on the processes of the organization. The system components he or she has been manipulating, have been those components that directly impact the processes. Since the processes are the business of the organization, success or failure was fully dependent on involving everyone in the organization. The need to involve everyone in the continuous improvement effort never ends. But if it is only strength of character that drives quality, the "leader" has become the indispensable man. [Tom Peters, "Liberation Management," discusses the problems of the indispensable man in some detail and provides specific examples how one can cure such behavior.] It is the responsibility of management to provide the environment, the system, that allows (indeed facilitates and encourages) outstanding performance; that ensures the organization adopts the philosophy. While everyone is important and ought to be made to feel that way, no one should be allowed to become indispensable. It is the antithesis of team. Management must create constancy of purpose. There must be common direction for all the organizational components, and all the organizations components must contribute to attainment of the organization's objectives. This requires first an organizational mission. While the statement may be a product of the organization, it is management that will launch it, that must see the need for it. The improvement of processes is not a long term vision-- although, granted, it is a long term commitment. The long term vision is not the mission either. It is a statement of where TQM, the road of continuous improvement, is to take the organization. Again, a product of the entire organization, maybe; but it is management driven and management's responsibility to ensure its creation and dissemination throughout the organization. It is a management duty to provide the boundaries--mission and vision. These managerial activities, mission statement, vision statement, serve as the foundation for strategic planning--a managerial responsibility. Strategic planning should generate long term goals and specific, short term objectives for the improvement process. It is the duty of management to ensure that all the goals are meaningful. Management responsibility to the system continues with the deployment of policy throughout the organization. Again I will say this, but for the last time. The work of creating these things is not done in a back room. Teams, with representation from throughout the organization, to do the work and to make the recommendations, is the preferred mechanism. But the exercises one undertakes to create or to modify systems are the essence of management. (It takes leadership to get it done.) Continuing with deployment.... [For those who would like to see this discussed in more detail, you might try Juran's book, "Planning for Quality." He takes the reader step by step from identify the customer to deployment with considerable detail. (And he writes clear, readable text.)] Deployment is multiple processes. It is the process by which organizational goals become detailed, specific objectives with resource requirements and commitments. It is also a process by which management can assure that its goals and the goals of the components are in alignment with one another, with the mission, and with the vision. This (deployment) is a particularly dangerous exercise for management. Its responsibility is to ensure the exercise does not trip over into the old numeric game. Goals deployed must be faithful to the spirit of TQM. They have to be goals for improvement not for achieving a result. If slippage occurs, the result may be an improved system, but it is just as likely to be a bastardization of the system such that progress in one area is at the expense of another (often not identifiable at once; often producing a net loss) or, in true Deming misery, the figures are distorted. Management has to guard that the assessment of performance stays focused on how well people are improving the processes, not on how close to the numeric goal people have come. Self evaluation and self correction can easily become self promotion; competition, not cooperation if the management is unskilled or uninformed. This is the end of part three. --- This is part four of a bunch of parts: Continuing the description; focusing on the customer and using teams... The focus of quality must be the customer. Linking organizational purpose to customer satisfaction is much more than an exercise in leadership. Just identifying customers requires an alien mind set. Anyone can see that those outside the organization are customers. It is much more difficult to bring to the organization the realization that everyone in the organization affected by the processes in which one is involved, is a customer. Note the word employed here is, "realization," not "recognition" or some other whimpy commitment. Realization denotes one is committed to learning the needs of his or her coworkers and satisfying them with the same zeal and with the same success one satisfies a stranger. Satisfying customers continues with--after identification, which is itself a management chore--understanding customers; understanding their needs, their expectation, and their requirements. This often means understanding the customer better than the customer understands his or herself and understanding him or her implicitly. It means establishing meaningful dialogue, listening, involving the customer in the organization's planning and in the organization's deciding. Teams are the engine that propel continuous improvement, and successfully functioning teams are the vehicles that include everyone in the improvement effort. I would not argue that leadership is often the difference between a successfully functioning team and something less. However, the little computer that keeps it together, that gets all the cylinders firing cooperatively, is management. Teams do not spontaneously birth. Without constancy of purpose, teams develop conflicting and counterproductive goals. The work of teams in TQM is managed participation, and it is essential that teams develop goals and pursue improvements that reinforce one another as well as contribute to the vision and to the mission. Cross-functional teams are not natural. It takes a Dr. Frankenstein (a manager) to bring individuals from several functional components together, to provide the system that facilitates peer collaboration. [I have to concede, separating the mix of management responsibility and leadership skill that raise the behavior of individuals on cross-functional teams above parochialism and evolve a "team think" concentration on common processes is extremely delicate surgery indeed.] Teams not devoted to improvement also have a place, and management has to know when an emerging problem demands immediate attention. Short term, problem solving teams have been a mainstay in the managerial toolbox for generations, and they have place in TQM. Managerial responsibility is to foster the system that eventually includes everyone on an improvement team. Management must also ensure that process improvement teams are linked vertically and horizontally. Vertically: lower-level teams function consistently within the expectations of higher levels and the organization as a whole proceeds logically. Horizontally: cross-functional groups address common problems and the lessons learned in one area are applied in another with duplicative effort. This is the end of part four. --- This is part five of a bunch of parts: Continuing the description; common subject, different perspective on education and training... Earlier I spoke of education and training as a mix of leadership and management; how a leader can teach and the responsibilities of management to insure that educational resources (workshops, conferences) are there. But the greater managerial responsibility is the creation of a system that ensures adequate time as well as sufficient availability of the more traditional training resources. Management must, in the final analysis, decide if the organization will develop organizational-specific training approaches or use (or adapt) exiting resources and materials. It is management that is responsible for the personal and professional development of its people. It has to first recognize that training in the TQM environment is continuous and management has to arrange for continuous training. The training has to be consistent, a managerial responsibility. The must be a common level of understanding about TQM principles, techniques, tools, and skills throughout the organization. Managers and supervisors have to be trained; management must ensure it happens. Managers must create the time for improvement. Time has to be provided not just for the effort, but for the training (OJT and in the classroom). Time must be provided for team meetings. Time must also be provided for the independent activities associated with TQM; such as, data collection and analysis. Managers must organize it all to support continuous improvement. The organizational structure that mirrors the improvement effort, facilitates the effort. This is the end of part five. --- This part six of a bunch of parts: Continuing the description; bringing it all home, making Total Quality Management (not Total Quality Leadership) the over arching philosophy... If continuous improvement becomes one with the organization it will survive and the organization will thrive. It (continuous improvement) must become the routine, the normal approach; it must become the system. The organization must expect improvement; not simply that THE leader (or leaders) expects improvement, but that everyone in the organization, peers, subordinates, and superiors expects improvement, and everyone outside the organization, customers and suppliers (see part seven) expects improvement. These are not expectations born of criticism and punishment, but expectations born of a systematic unwillingness to accept less. The recharacterization of problems to opportunities requires an organization poised to milk "problems" for the potential for improvement inherent in their existence. It requires not just acknowledgement of their existence, but an active, systematic effort to ferret them out as well as a rewards system for those who surface them [still a subject for future debate]. Depending upon the maturity of TQM in the organization, there will be policies and routines out of alignment with the philosophy of TQM that must be systematically eliminated, and, as TQM matures, new TQM-contradictory policies and routines will be introduced. They too must be identified and eliminated, or brought into alignment. It is a basic tenet of TQM that fear has to be driven from the work place and out of the organization. We need only look to the reinventing government movement to see that failed management does not drive out fear, it embeds it: the shoot the managers credo, penalizing problem finders by requiring finders without ownership to solve the problems they illuminate, and the disregard for survival--the first and most basic need--with the threats of job loss and the message, "go away." The inevitable results of this managerial myopia create environments and systems that leadership cannot set right. Resolution requires a systematic realignment of the vision itself, of the vision with the goals, and of the strategic and implementation plans with the vision and the goals. Given the body of literature available, it is mind boggling that the body politic has come to believe that TQM can be implemented by fiat, without evolution, and without hard, dedicated work. The rewards and recognition systems have to be aligned with the TQM philosophy. [I will not address this here with the intention of debating the role of these systems in TQM at some future date.] "Leading Teams" by (I think it was) Zenger et. al. and "The Customer Comes Second" by Rothenblath contain some interesting discussions of the subject.] [Apologies is I've spelled the names of these authors incorrectly. I'm writing in a place where I don't have access to my personal library.] The move to stop reliance on mass inspections--another basic tenet--has to come from management. When working people are producing products that are accepted or rejected on the basis of inspection, the incentive and the result is to produce products "good enough" to pass inspection--hardly an acceptable definition of quality by any standard. Lastly, making quality part and parcel to the organization also requires management take a fresh look at the way it justifies cost. Juran tells us ["Designing for Quality"] that the only valid comparisons are total cost to total cost. [E.g., a hammer with a five dollar price tag that last three months "costs" an organization an amount many fold more than does a as hammer with a thirty or fifty dollar price tag that lasts a lifetime.] This is the end of part six. --- This is part seven of a bunch of parts: Expanding to suppliers... The emphasis on customers is so pervasive in the conception of TQM, the necessity to bring suppliers into the picture can be overlooked. That oversight, particularly in cases of competition, can differentiate the winners from the losers. The Juran Trilogy, supplier, processor, customer, is everywhere all the time; every process and each of us is a supplier, a processor, and a customer. We may look at this at its most basic level: a person (supplier) gives something to another, who does something to it (processor), and gives it to another who needs it (customer). And we may look at this at its most macro level and its essence is unchanged: Japan (supplier) provides steel to Canada (processor) which make a automobile sold in the U.S. (customer). No matter what magnification our perception, inclusion of the supplier requires multiple processes (a system) and a commitment, which, in the case of an organization, is a management undertaking. Bringing the supplier into the system is much more than inviting her representative to attend meetings. We might begin with the purchasing process; eliminate redundancy, unnecessary processes, and procedures not worth the effort. With a mature TQM in place, management could forget a host of safeguards in favor of trust and forget a litany of specifications to which lowest price competitors bid and in which they invest heavily to undercut. One reason management must be committed is the time it takes for TQM to mature in an organization; years. Getting all one's ducks in order within the organization and with the external customers before bringing suppliers into the system just delays maturity and leaves a gap for competing, better managed TQM organizations, to fill. Suppliers should be involved early and pervasively. Each benefits from the lessons the other learns. It is in the organization's best interest to help suppliers improve--after all, what better insurance of quality supplies?-- by conducting supplier work shops, permitting suppliers into organizational training, implementing personnel exchange programs, and (and it is a BIG AND) making the intraorganizational data available to them--this is pure Juran; pure management. When the teams begin to form, the organization who's management engages suppliers in mutual problem solving, mutual improvement exercises, is the organization with the edge and the organization with the more mature system. Organizational management should reward improving suppliers. Longer term contracts, additional contracts, better profit margins, reduced oversight are examples of managerial reward. But probably the best reward for suppliers and organization alike is reduction in the number of suppliers. Deming ["Out of the Crisis"] is quite clear in his guidance on this: we invest time and resources and create for ourselves the opportunity for closer, long term alliance with fewer suppliers. Win, win. [Deming: "The New Realities"] The TQM process allows us to quite clearly identify the best suppliers; the ones with whom we want to establish an extended relationship. They are the ones who focus on team work, who have the total commitment and (conceding a point) leadership from top management, who have a vision of continuous improvement, and whose emphasis on improvement is data driven. This is the end of part seven. --- * Origin: TQM BBS - Total Quality Management - (301) 585-1164 (11:202/299)