Mugged!
Our day started out normally enough. My wife and I woke, ate breakfast, dressed the kids, loaded up the minivan, and headed to church. A fairly typical Sunday morning for the Patons, except this Sunday was to be different. This particular Sunday we got mugged--right inside the church. Unbelievable.
Here’s what happened: Heidi and I decided to attend a different church than we normally do for Sunday services. She’s been attending a weekly Bible study for moms with small children, and she’s become quite fond of the group and the husband-and-wife pastors who run the church, so we decided to check out the service.
It all went well at first. We dropped the twins in the nursery and took out seats near the back of the church. The music was nice and the sermon inspirational. Then it happened: The pastor asked if there were any visitors. I raised my hand. She welcomed us to the service and told us that they had gifts for us.
A sweet little old lady came over with mugs filled with chocolates and tea bags and a welcome message. They were ours to keep. We’d been mugged by a little old lady right in the middle of a church service!
This incident made me think about how differently you’re treated when you go to church vs. how you’re often treated as a customer, or worse, an employee. Go to a new church and everyone there welcomes you, going so far as to give you a pie or a mug.
Contrast that experience with how some companies treat their customers: “You want to buy something from me? Hmm. I’m gonna need payment in advance, credit references, a signed 30-page contract, a nondisclosure agreement, and adherence to our quality standards.”
It’s even worse when you’re a new employee. “You want to work for us? Hmm. You’re gonna need to pee in this cup, wait 12 months to get full benefits, submit to random drug tests. Oh, yeah, we’re gonna monitor your phone calls, e-mails, and Internet activity, too. And don’t get any ideas about making any suggestions about how to improve things around here. We’ve already tried that.”
Sound familiar? Does any of that happen where you work? Ah, but you’re in quality. These things don’t relate to you. Ha! Think again. Of course, you suffer the indignities of being an employee. (Peed in a cup lately?) But don’t be so smug, Mr. or Ms. Quality. See, you might not be any better with your audits and your inspections and your data analysis and your standards.
“But… but that’s my job,” you say. “I’m supposed to do those things.”
True. But how do you do it? Are you a church mugger or a park mugger? A church mugger gets her way with sweetness and light. A park mugger gets his way at gunpoint.
Do you schedule audits arbitrarily with-- out consulting those who will be audited in advance? Do you post and distribute audit schedules well in advance of your audits? Do you communicate the results of data analysis in a constructive manner? Do you assume that everyone knows that a third-party auditor will be in next week, or do you communicate that to all affected departments? Are your document control, corrective action, and management review processes designed to work for you or for those affected by them? Do you clearly communicate customer requirements, complaints, specifications, and updates?
Go to a church, temple, or mosque, and you’ll hear the word of God made understandable so that we mere humans can relate to it. It ain’t easy. The Bible, the Torah, the Koran, the Book of Mormon--they’re not easily understood, and a great deal of them require a lot of faith on the part of their adherents. People study them for their entire lives. Now, take something as miniscule and simple as ISO 9001. It’s only been around about two decades. (OK, longer if you go back to the old mil specs upon which ISO 9001 is based.) If you’re trying to get people to buy into them--to have faith in them--you might take a lesson from the priests and rabbis and mullahs: Make ISO standard requirements understandable and inviting. Mug your people. Welcome them into your mysterious world with pies and mugs or maybe a good old-fashioned potluck. (Of course, I don’t mean this literally, but you get the idea.)
While you’re at it, why not mug your customers? I know you don’t have much, if any, input into customer acquisition, but you probably do work directly with them in other areas: communicating requirements, specifications, audits, and the like. Killing them with kindness will at least make your life easier, and it could lead to more business for your company.
You may not have a lot of control over how your company treats its employees, either, but you can do your part by making quality welcoming. Build faith in those around you by demonstrating how important quality is to the success of your organization. Evangelize. Spread the quality gospel. Walk the talk. Mug someone today.
How do you make sure that quality is a way of life in your organization? Are you a quality zealot or apathetic? Share your thoughts online at www.qualitycurmudgeon.com.
Scott M. Paton is Quality Digest’s editor at large .
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