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Management for Quality
To produce high quality, we must pursue better methods for working together. Most companies in North America are designed to achieve stability through control. But to compete with quality over the long run, we must constantly improve it. Stability is not our objective, and therefore control cannot be our method. Quality excellence demands that we learn and improve constantly to master change, not achieve stability. This is why our method must be teamwork. Counter-intuitively, to pursue quality excellence with full vigour, Management must often relinquish control to the teams they manage. Their role evolves from directing individuals, to supporting and extending the capabilities of teams.
Working within a quality focussed company is radically different from working within a typical bureaucratic organization. The roles and responsibilities of every member of the organization are transformed by the need to learn and master change. Indeed, quality initiatives will fail if a company does not change the way people collaborate.
The old role of management was to supervise and direct. Workers were responsible for doing what they were told, and performing to the satisfaction of their managers. Managers were responsible for thinking about how workers should work, and had to answer to their superiors about it. This state of affairs signaled a divorce between thinking and doing. Thinking about work was a manager's job, and the worker's job was doing what they were told. Managers provided brains, and workers -- brawn.
To compete and succeed in this new millennium, companies must remarry thinking and doing. They can no longer separate responsibilities along these lines because everything companies must do is a combination of thought and action. Supervision - once considered necessary for efficiency - is now seen as a drain on efficiency because it adds no value. Directing was once considered the key to effectiveness - but we now realize that teamwork is, because it enables co-ordination and learning.
The question then, is how to make managers value-adding contributors in organizations that are driven by teams. The answer has many components. For starters, managers must work to eliminate fear in the workplace. This includes fear of reprisal, fear of failure and fear of job loss -- all of which were used by old-style managers to get workers to do what they were told. Managers of today must also help workers to overcome fear of the unknown and fear of change. Only when fear is eliminated can employees give their "all", without worry or hesitation.
The old way had workers working to satisfy bosses. The new way sees all employees charged with satisfying customers. The situation has reversed itself. Managers must now look at employees as their customers. They must ensure that their needs are met if the organization's goals are to be achieved. Today's managers must;
establish a clear mandate or mission for the team,
describe the limits placed on the team's activities,
provide every support that the team may require,
facilitate access to outsiders who may be able to help the team,
operate an incentive program that produces high motivation, and
provide feedback to teams in a timely manner
Managers must make a long-term commitment to quality excellence. They must envision and plan to implement a means for achieving the organization's goals - both now and in the future. The manager's new fields of action include the following;
ensuring that training and employee development are in support of the long-term plans of the company,
working with suppliers and subcontractors to improve the quality of "inputs",
working with other outsiders to shape the company's operating processes, ensuring they conform and adapt to external requirements,
implementing technological change as required by the company and the market, even shaping it if possible, and
regularly assessing progress towards these goals, and addressing deficiencies wherever they are found
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