John Guaspari
EXCLUSIVE ONLINE COLUMNIST

Here are some questions I often get from clients, or others with whom I cross paths, along with the standard answers I give.

Question: How do you respond to people who say that quality is bureaucratic, burdensome, insulting and threatening?

Answer: I say that they must be paying attention. Quality is bureaucratic, burdensome, insulting and threatening!

Question: How do I get people to understand that quality isn't just about "not screwing up"?

Answer: But quality is just about "not screwing up."

Question: How do I get people to understand that quality is a way of life?

Answer: But quality is not a way of life.

Now, why would I say such things? More to the point, why would I write such things--especially in this forum? After all, if my answers aren't heretical, aren't they--given that they're appearing on the virtual pages sponsored by Quality Digest--at the very least, highly impolite?

They would be, if my purpose in writing them were to denigrate quality. But that's not what I'm up to here. In fact, I think that quality's tools and principles are the most powerful set of practices and ideas that an organization has at its disposal to achieve dramatic performance breakthroughs.

But by putting quality in inappropriately lofty terms, we set people up for disappointment and thereby do quality a disservice. Rather, by adopting a more realistic, clear-eyed view of what quality is--and isn't!--we can set people's expectations more realistically and, in the process, make the application of quality tools and principles more effective.

So, let's take my "charges" one at a time:

*I've said that quality is (or at least often can be) "bureaucratic, burdensome, threatening and insulting." I stand by that statement. You can put whatever gloss you want on it, but don't an awful lot of the training, meeting, reporting and other appurtenances of the standard quality initiative have "bureaucracy" written all over them?

You might have generated a snappy new slogan ("Steal Time for Quality!"), but doesn't it, at least in the near term, translate into extra work for people--people who, by the way, are already stretched a tad thin?

Are you really surprised when people feel insulted by this newfound emphasis on quality? When they ask, "Are you suggesting that we haven't cared about quality in the past?" do you really have an answer?

How could people not feel threatened when they're told that "the cost of quality is 50-percent higher than it should be, 75 percent of all process steps don't add value, and we have a 'hidden factory' that makes nothing but defective products"?

These are knotty questions. Most organizations deal with them by expanding the definition of what quality really is, thereby avoiding the need to confront the very real issues contained within them.

*I've said that "Quality is about just not screwing up." Why should we be defensive about that? It's what can enable us to do what we set out to do, without waste, rework, inefficiencies, and the high levels of frustration and enervation that go with them. Isn't that an awfully good thing? How does it get better by expanding the domain of what quality should be about?

I've said that "Quality is not a way of life." In fact, it is, as fellow Web site columnist Phil Crosby has so precisely been instructing us for many years now, "conformance to requirements." No more, no less. In a turbulent world, it can provide some blessed clarity and direction to help workers do their jobs and help management run the joint. Embellishments ("Quality means meeting or exceeding requirements!") let the genie back out of the bottle. Quality's domain is limited and limiting, and therein lies its strength.

That quality is limited becomes a problem only if, for some inexplicable reason, you have a need to make it your primary corporate objective and focus. It shouldn't be. Creating value should. And before you think I'm consigning quality to a position of minor importance, consider this metaphor: Quality is the foundation on which to build value.

Structurally speaking, what is the most critical element of any building? Its foundation. But the foundation isn't the essence of a building any more than quality is--or should be--the essence of a business.

Most definitively, quality is not a way of life. It is a set of tools and techniques, principles and methodologies, that can give you command and mastery of your processes, so that when you set out to do "x", you can do it--quickly, efficiently, productively, repeatably and profitably.

That's all it is, but that's quite a lot.

About the author

John Guaspari is president of Guaspari & Salz Inc., a Concord, Massachusetts-based management consulting firm. The books he has written include I Know It When I See It and The Customer Connection.