Ronald Zemke
Senior Editor, Training Magazine

Corporate fathers and Mothers, it seems, are dearly disappointed with their investments in total quality mania

Having concluded long ago that all such faddish over zealousness is destined to be rewarded with disappointment, I am not totally surprised. Ok, Ok, so I have mouthed off a little and poked a spot of fun at the inordinate hype and hoopla surrounding TQM -- a movement based on the three earth shaking principles: "Count things," "Fix things," and "Ask around -- somebody must know a better way to do this." But on the main, I've tried to be supportive of the core idea -- good quality leads to good results and should be focused on.

In a past issue of Quality Progress magazine, a publication of the American Society of Quality Control, two University of Tennessee management professors have called the quality community to task for the disappointing results that are beginning to surface. In a brief, but pointed, and largely on target article, "Maintaining Focus Within Your Organization," William Parr and Cheryl Hild suggest that one or more of seven deadly distractions are at the root of a failed or disappointing quality program.

1. A manufacturing focus. When a quality program is aimed solely at an organization's core deliverables and ignores the improvement potential in support structures and systems, a lot of potential gain is being ignored.

2. Reorganization for reorganization's sake. Mindless rearranging and shuffling of boxes on the org chart in hopes of somehow creating a structure that solves quality problems generally comes to no good end.

3. Obsession with Quality awards. Structuring and operating to fulfill the criteria of the Baldrige or Deming pageants rather than working exclusively to improve product and profit is a dereliction of fiduciary responsibility. The hope seems to be that rallying the troops to win a high visibility quality beauty contest will have, as a side effect, a quality improvement outcome. The focus is on the wrong goal.

4. Data dementia. The counting and charting, analyzing and assessing, of every action, activity and process -- regardless of current performance -- is a very expensive and wasteful use of human resources. The careful targeting of these expensive activities would, the authors seem to suggest, make much more sense.

5. Hyper customer satisfaction measurement. Endless, intense customer satisfaction measurement -- particularly when customers say they are satisfied -- simply wastes more resources and wears out your welcome with customers. Better to monitor periodically and save hounding your customers for feedback until you really need their input -- when things aren't to their liking.

6. Total employee involvement. Pursuing employee involvement as the core improvement strategy neglects the legitimate role of management in identifying critical problem and opportunity areas and can lead to a lot of activity with promise of improvement.

7. An obsession with training. Lining everyone up and sheep dipping them in the mandatory one week -- even one day -- total quality tools workshop is an exercise in futility. This "everybody needs to know how to do SPC" attitude flies in the faced of just-in-time management.

I have degrees of agreement -- from mild to enthusiastic -- with Parr and Hild's assertions. You probably feel the same way. But the seventh of their sins, the "obsession with training" judgment, bothers me a lot.

I'm concerned about the welcome we will receive from management three, five and 10 years from now. Training is hot stuff today, the performance problem solution de jour. Tell'em training will solve all their problems, and senior management in many organizations are predisposed to buy.

But what happens when that fickle spotlight moves on and management learns that is has once again been oversold? When did you last tell a manager you could indeed train everyone in customer service skills or TQM tools but that none of it was going to make a bit of difference until the department's information system problems were fixed? Or her leadership style changed? Or he staffed better?

Better, I think, to preach realism and caution when it comes to training than to bask in the moment and jeopardize the future. Gotta run...

Ronald Zemke is the Senior Editor of Training Magazine and President of Performance Research Associates, Inc.

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