Quality 911

I was channel surfing and came across the show Nanny 911.  The premise of the show is that there are families who cannot control their children, so they call Nanny 911.  The nanny focuses on the behaviors of the parents rather than the behavior of the children.  A nanny trying to control the behavior of children is analogous to putting your hand in a bucket of water in hopes of displacing water.  Your hand displaces the water, but as soon as your hand is removed, the water goes back to its original position.  The same analogy holds true for the quality department.  It is impossible to enforce quality standards within an organization without holding management accountable.

The nanny teaches parents that children need to have boundaries, and children need to understand there are consequences to their behaviors. Generally, the consequence for the children is timeout.  Since there is no adult time out, a manager can’t put an employee in time out; so, other types of consequences must be adopted.

Too often, quality consultants are focused to helping employees implement a process or fine tune existing processes.    They need to be working and consulting with senior management so management understands they have a role in implementing quality programs.

The bottom line, folks can work, talk, train, cajole, sell, and communicate process until blue in the face; but if management does not enforce the desired process, then the process is not going to happen.  By enforce, I mean there have to be consequences to following the process and for not following the process.  A consequence does include loss of job.  Many successful managers I have worked with do fire people for not following the process, and they also reward those who do follow the process.