It’s been going on since the first tool was made. Since the first process was created companies have been trying on catchy names in the name of improving what is, into what could be better. Today, a corporation attempting to achieve qualitative and quantitative change to either make themselves more lean, shorten their sales cycle is a sure way to add to profits. How do you know if your are succeeding in changing organizational culture or behavior, lowering the cost of doing business, eliminating duplication of common services, or even creating new markets from current intellectual property, or patents or products without the right people, processes and tools? There have been numerous books written on re-engineering the corporation, transformational leadership and change. Enter the words ‘transforming an organization’ into an advanced Google search and thousands of will pop up. Imagine, for moment that each book contains a unique aspect on the approach and when it’s appropriate to apply it. That would imply that we have thousands of ‘right approaches’ and we need to know which one is the right one to apply in each situation when transforming an organization.
Transformation is a way to qualitative and quantitative change what’s not, or could be working better for a company, and companies are clearly looking for guidance from professionals who can help them. Rarely, do publishers publish what does not sell.
So, how does any of this relate to review, approve, and verify? Those three words put into practice have the ability to transform your organization.
There may be some reading this that believe there is a ‘one size fits all’ approach to delivery quality processes. Solving problems is as simple as creating one, simple flow chart, prescribing it to a plethora of challenges and the rest will solve itself. In the long run leadership at companies looking to transform need to ask themselves if they would prefer a doctor who prescribes for them the same medicine dispensed to all patients without fully understanding or offering professional guidance regarding not only what ails them, but what caused what ails them and how to get on a road to recovery?
There are four quadrants that you should be conscious of when choosing a quality process and deciding how to go about implementing it shown here:
| Right Approach, Applied Incorrectly(Message is on key people ‘get’ what the process is, it’s the delivery mechanism/forum that is off-base). Your processes and leadership (a person or team) is in place, however; a groupthink mindset due to a lack of sustained momentum and low quantitative and qualitative data exists. This is a ‘I understand it, we do things differently here or, I just do what I am told’ mentality. | Right Approach, Applied Correctly(The right message, delivered the right way)Processes and leadership with the ability to sustain momentum has encouraged and mentored a framework that nurtures and sustains qualitative and quantitative data that is vital to building a continuously aware, transformational organization. |
| Wrong Approach, Applied Incorrectly( Message is incorrect or, makes the process appear more opaque than it already was and the delivery mechanism/ forum are both inappropriate)It’s an “every man for himself” attitude coming from most team members nearly all the time. Data that is available is meaningless because the processes that allow for the collection of data is flawed, transformation is unthinkable. This is the “Why should I care about this?” Or, “how is this connected to my work?” | Wrong Approach, Applied Correctly(The message is incorrect, addresses partial goals, and has adverse effects even though the delivery mechanism/forum was appropriate)There is no sustained leadership. Sadly, the teams’ awareness of the ever changing approach and application with each new manager’s spin on following ritual will merely reaffirm their attitude to slog through the project more or less, to stay in sync or, out of trouble with the middle managers goals while losing sight of overall quality. This sustains mediocrity. |
In the next post I’ll talk about metrics that matter.
qualitasrebus 