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    [ID] => 151
    [post_author] => 5
    [post_date] => 2013-01-11 06:08:17
    [post_date_gmt] => 2013-01-11 06:08:17
    [post_content] => I used to open our management meetings with a simple question: “Which makes the better sense: invest time and energy to avoid problems or to solve them?”

It’s not a trick question, but I’m surprised by how it causes so many managers to squirm. And it is fascinating how many of them get it wrong. Most of them will first answer that solving problems is best – and that is the obvious answer. But the honest ones will come back with a list of apologetics that begins with how busy they are jumping from one crisis to another and ending with a quiet aside (as though it is a terrible secret) that they’re lucky if they can get their regular jobs done. In effect, they tell me that they never avoid problems – they only solve them.

Meanwhile, we watch at a distance as the people who really “get it” shake off the intimidation and the pressure, and simply roll up their sleeves. I remember the hotel manager who drove two hours in her own car, on her own time, to return a credit card to a Japanese guest boarding a flight to Europe. I think of the hydraulics engineer who volunteered to parachute into a wilderness area to fix one his company’s new water pumps. I smile at the memory of the shipping clerk who shouldered past jokes and ridicule from fellow employees as he carefully packaged every order as crisply and neatly as possible.

These are the heroes of quality. They are not ‘firemen’ who not rush to douse fires. They are the fearless fire preventers who jump into the arena to answer the call to stop the fires from starting. Often, their efforts draw scant praise, if they are noticed at all. But how we need these “extra mile people” in all aspects of our operations.

[pullquote]When leaders walk the talk of Quality, the organization moves as a cohesive social group that is better equipped to solve immediate problems and long term ones, and they may prevent problems that you haven’t foreseen.[/pullquote]

I’ve seen some organizations proclaim their commitment to quality, and yet go on crafting flawed processes that produce flawed products and services that rely on heroic efforts for day-to-day rescue. Lacking a strategy to take corrective actions and address the causes of the fires, eventually a situation will arise that even heroic efforts shall fail.

What should happen is that the organization must walk the talk of quality – bring quality into the corporate culture from the top down. And it can starting with encouraging those basic human skills of communication, interaction, and implementation, or as defined in the LEO methodology: listen, enrich, and optimize.

Imagine what would happen if we made a sincere effort to improve communication with our customers, suppliers, co-workers and even our competitors? What would happen if we really listened to them? Maybe instead of keeping our noses to the spread sheets, perhaps we we’d start asking questions like “why” and “how” and listen to people who might give us better clarity about what is going on NOW.

With meaningful interaction, we enrich the organizational culture and encourage everybody to do more. We open ourselves up to lessons on how we may improve, where we may improve and when. We may even increase the opportunity of keeping problems from occurring in the first place.

Equipped with better communication and interaction, now we are better prepared to implement a renewed awareness throughout the organization. Not only are we putting out the fires; we are preventing them from happening. We are optimizing our relationships both inside and outside of the organization.

When it is delivered to every member of the organization – from top to bottom – LEO becomes the trigger-point for high level communication skills that I found among the best organizations. When the leaders of the organization walk the talk, they are the example for everybody to follow. That’s how leaders engage every member of the organization and gain commitment to an unprecedented level of quality. 

When leaders walk the talk of Quality, the organization moves as a cohesive social group that is better equipped to solve immediate problems and long term ones, and they may prevent problems that you haven’t foreseen. When this level of communication is achieved, then it doesn’t matter when a problem eventually crops up (because we know they will), because now there will always be enough fire preventers ready to take action.
    [post_title] => Walking and Talking Quality
    [post_excerpt] => Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are? Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence? 
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    [post_name] => walking-talking-quality
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    [post_modified] => 2013-04-15 09:59:24
    [post_modified_gmt] => 2013-04-15 09:59:24
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    [guid] => http://subirchowdhury.com/?p=151
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