A key aspect of quality management is the importance we place on employees, i.e., valuing people. We spend a significant amount of time and money officially sending this message to our team, espousing this pillar of quality. Yet, while doing this, we often directly contradict this by sending a clearer and longer lasting message. Let me give you a few examples.

Just two weeks after being downsized, a manager got a call from a vice president at his former company. “Great,” he thought, “A job lead, someone reaching out to help, provide a reference?” No, I’m afraid not. The vice president was calling to remind him that he owed $10 on the fantasy football league. You can bet that this frustrated manager told this story to as many people as he could, including colleagues who were still working at his former employer. This sort of story spreads like wildfire and rightly so. It’s an amazingly uncaring, thoughtless thing to have done. It also provides as definitive insight into the attitudes of the organization’s leadership.

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