Quality isn’t just free … it’s profitable.
“A company with a highly developed ‘culture of quality’ spends, on average, $350M less annually fixing mistakes than a company with a poorly developed one.” HBRHarvard Business Review, in an article “Creating a Culture of Quality” from 2014, defined a “true culture of quality” as “an environment in which employees not only follow quality guidelines but also consistently see others taking quality-focused actions, hear others talking about quality, and feel quality all around them.”
The study was focused on big businesses – hence the $350M number – basically, it was discovered that between the bottom 5th and top 5th (quality culture), the top saved $13,400 annually per employee compared to the bottom.
The culture of quality includes four factors that drive quality as a cultural value:
1. Leadership emphasis; Managers are told that quality is a leadership priority. Managers “walk the talk” on quality. When evaluating employees, bosses emphasize the importance of quality.
2. Message Credibility; Messages are delivered by respected sources. Workers find that communications appeal to them personally. Messages are consistent and easy to understand.
3. Peer Involvement; Most employees have a strong network of peers for guidance. Peers routinely raise quality as a topic for team discussion. Like members of a sports team, peers hold one another accountable.
4. Employee Ownership; Workers clearly understand how quality fits with the job. Workers are empowered to make quality decisions. Workers are comfortable raising concerns about quality violations and challenging directives that detract from quality.
How do you know that your organization has weak culture of quality?
- Lacks formal mechanisms for collecting and analyzing customer feedback
- Experiences frequent, perhaps minor, setbacks owing to inconsistent quality
- Training and development do no emphasize quality
- Performance evaluation metrics have little/no mention of quality goals
- Managers fail to consistently emphasize quality or resistant to quality initiatives
OK, fine for big businesses, but what does that mean for us, mere mortals? Small businesses? Stay tuned for part II!