Quality doesn't happen in a conference room

Does your company have meetings about quality?

Do the meetings result in better product quality or a better customer experience?

Do the meetings result in your team knowing exactly how to "storm the beaches" and go after the needed improvements?

The answer is most often "no" to all three.  That's because quality doesn't happen in a conference room.  Lean practitioners use the phrase "go to the gemba".  And regular people, (who aren't necessarily as nerdy and obsessed with quality), might say, "get out on the floor" to see what's really needed.

This is a generations-old disconnect between management and floor level associates.  It's a disconnect between operations and quality.  It's a disconnect between "front office" and operations.  It's a difference between sales and operations.  It's even a difference between engineering and operations in many cases.

The best way to learn how to improve something is to go to the people who do the work and ask them.  We quality professionals, lean practitioners and managers like to measure performance and we might, might have a pretty good idea of what needs improving.  (Or we may not really know at all).  But, you can bet the people doing the work not only clearly understand what needs to be improved, but also have some pretty good ideas of how to fix things.

Human nature does not make us tend toward less than excellence.  Even the least motivated, least committed "clock puncher" wants to achieve even a minimal level of success on a daily basis.  And by the way, those least motivated, least committed "clock punchers" can be a treasure-trove of information.  Don't neglect the opportunity to explore what they can do to improve your business.  And then be honest with yourself and try to discover why they are being left behind and not properly engaged as a valuable resource to your business.  

Does anyone remember the "meeting with the "Bob's" in the movie, Office Space, where Peter explains that he has 8 different bosses and the problem is he just doesn't care about his job?  He goes on to tell them that "hassling people will make them work just hard enough not to get fired".  Yeeeeiiiiikes!  The "Bob's" are the first people to even speak with Peter about what a work day looks like for him and they are shocked.  Peter's boss, Lumberg, has no idea, except to offer "Hawaiian shirt day" as a way to energize the team.  And to top it off, Peter and his coworkers dislike their soul crushing jobs so much that they hatch a plot to not FIX a coding error they've discovered, but to exploit it in a revenge plot against their employer.  Double yeeeeiiiiiikes!

I find that spending time directly in operations and/or where the work is being done to be the most bountiful source of information.  And solving problems identified where the work is being done is the best first step to engaging everyone in a robust effort toward quality improvement.  As I said, human nature makes us tend to be frustrated by nonconformance (not to want to cause it).  And it makes us tend to just naturally want to improve.  

Let's put on some PPE and get out of that conference room and go see where the work is being done.  Let's find ways to save you money, get better results in your product and customer experience and improve your business.  

Check out some testimonials (by industry) given to me by my clients.  I keep things simple.  And believe it or not, I really do make quality fun!  And I LOVE SAVING MONEY!  

Check out my profile and website to learn more about me and what I can do for you!  Maybe it's decluttering your documentation for ISO9001, or helping simplify the whole thing!  Maybe it's a kaizen event, lean, 5S/6S, internal quality audits, or a review of your metrics and management review to go beyond reporting and get to some real improvement.  Let's roll up our sleeves and get it done.