Looking Back
Pat Townsend & Joan Gebhardt
October is the 20th anniversary
of our involvement in quality. In October 1983, Pat started
his first post-Marine Corps job at the Paul Revere Insurance
Group in Worcester, Massachusetts. It was a loosely-defined
position with a vague title. The company had decided to
do quality, and although they weren’t sure what it
entailed, Pat’s background in leadership and writing
seemed like it might be useful.
It was an interesting time in quality. Japanese cars and
electronics had American firms on the run; the NBC White
Paper “If Japan Can Do It, Why Can’t We?”
had first been shown in 1980, and its impact was still being
felt; and people like Tom Peters, W. Edwards Deming, Joseph
M. Juran, and Phil Crosby were beginning--finally--to be
noticed and, to varying degrees, listened to.
Until then, practically all quality efforts had been in
manufacturing industries, placing Paul Revere Insurance
Group noticeably ahead of the curve in the service industry
with its stated intent to define and implement a quality
process. It was, in fact, so far ahead of the curve that
it couldn’t find a consultant who could string the
words quality process and service organization together
in the same sentence. The company was pretty much on its
own.
As it turned out, the lack of available outside expertise
became a major factor in some of the most important decisions
made at Paul Revere with regards to the definition and implementation
of their quality has value process. Because there was no
consultant to carefully map out a long drawn-out process,
the Paul Revere quality steering committee was left with
no choice but to do things logically.
For instance, these questions, answers and conclusions:
Question: Who should we involve in this?
Answer: Is there anyone we want to leave out? Nobody, right?
Conclusion: OK, so everybody’s in.
The decision to proceed with 100 percent employee involvement
from the outset was so glaringly obvious that it didn’t
even make it into the minutes of the quality steering committee
meeting in which the decision was made.
Question: When can we get going?
Answer: Well, what’s involved? We need to split the
company into teams, we need to train team leaders, and we
need to set up some sort of quality department structure.
We should be able to get that done by the end of the year,
shouldn’t we?
Conclusion: The first meeting of the quality steering committee
was in May 1983; the process was begun in January 1984--eight
months later.
By the time it was launched and underway, Pat was the director
of the process. Awareness that the process as implemented
at Paul Revere was an out-of-the-mainstream approach came
early on. Among the characteristics that stood out as different
were, of course, 100 percent employee participation and
the quick start but also on the odd list were the emphasis
on recognition, gratitude and celebration; blending of a
process/value analysis effort (doing the right things or
re-engineering) with the quality team effort (doing things
right); recognition of the importance of leadership and
communications as integral components of the effort; the
absolute need for personal involvement of the CEO/president
and his or her direct reports; and the use of measurement
at all levels. None of these components were unusual (other
than 100 percent involvement and the quick start); it was
doing them all together from the first day that was unusual.
In the years that followed, each of the separate components
of the Paul Revere process--re-engineering, leadership,
and various takes on measurement (ISO, Six Sigma, etc.)--was
put forward as the answer, all by itself. Each proved to
be exactly what might have been expected based on the Paul
Revere experience: a partial solution at best.
The Paul Revere process was, by all measures, a huge success.
In 1986, Tom Peters called it the best quality process in
any service organization in North America. It earned a site
visit from the Baldrige Award folks in 1988 (the inaugural
year of the award), and it made/saved millions of dollars
for the company. It was also the basis for our first book--Commit
to Quality--and the catalyst for 12 years on the speaker’s
circuit.
Next month: A report on the years since leaving Paul Revere
Insurance Group and what has changed and what hasn’t
changed in the quality world since our first experience.
Pat Townsend and Joan Gebhardt have written more than
200 articles and six books, including Commit to Quality
(John Wiley & Sons, 1986); Quality in Action: 93
Lessons in Leadership, Participation, and Measurement
(John Wiley & Sons, 1992); Five-Star Leadership:
The Art and Strategy of Creating Leaders at Every Level
(John Wiley & Sons, 1997); Recognition, Gratitude
& Celebration (Crisp Publications, 1997); How
Organizations Learn: Investigate, Identify, Institutionalize
(Crisp Publications, 1999); and Quality Is Everybody's
Business (CRC Press, 1999). Pat Townsend has recently
re-entered the corporate world and is now dealing with “leadership.com”
issues as a practitioner as well as an observer, writer
and speaker. He is now chief quality officer for UICI, a
diverse financial services corporation headquartered in
the Dallas area. Letters to the editor regarding this column
can be sent to letters@qualitydigest.com.
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