Quality: To sell or to do

I am sure Paul’s March blog post has brought back some pleasant and not-so-pleasant memories to many quality professionals across the world, reminiscing just what made them click with quality in their respective organizations. Some had a dream run, while the remaining many are still pushing the cart at a pace not many would envy.

Over my professional experience as a Quality consultant in the past and now as a full-time in-house Quality practitioner, I realized the one single factor that drives Quality in an organization is – Top management leadership and commitment. If the quality belief exists at the top, it will reflect in the bottomline, by default. The point here is even if you make the most saleable pitch on quality to senior executives and public officials and they buy in, what is the probability that they would be committed to it in the long run?

I liked what square peg Scott Rutherford said in his post – “Quality sells best when it is integrated or created into an organization’s culture” – I say if it’s integrated or created into the organization’s culture, I see it sold already!  HOW to get it integrated and created into the culture of the organization is the 70 year old question.

Paul says in his post, “I know this question has plagued the quality community for close to 70 years”. And we still don’t have a universal answer to this question? Its clear there is something amiss. One of the main reasons I stopped selling quality few years back, and started what we call the ‘Lead by example’ methodology. My passion for quality has not waned, only that I believe leading by example has far more power than just a sales pitch. It plants a belief system in people around you. It works for me. Now, I try to DO quality.

That’s probably the only sales pitch I found sustainable quality in.

Ciao.