Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Facing Cultural Barriers by Leaders to Strengthen a Culture of Quality

This blog post is in response to December 2015 ASQ Influential Voices topic "Facing Cultural Barriers by Leaders to Strengthen a Culture of Quality" a guest post  written by Luciana Paulise, the founder of Biztorming Training & Consulting, Argentina at:
http://asq.org/blog/2015/11/facing-cultural-barriers-by-leaders-to-strengthen-a-culture-of-quality/

Let me share my perspective of 40 years of professional work in observing for-profit and non-profit organisations globally. I gave a recent presentation on "Role of Leadership to Achieve Zero Defects Culture" at the ASQ Ahmedabad, India Local Member Community (LMC) on 28 November, 2015. The focus of my presentation and published article in the conference proceedings was as follows:

Role of Leadership for Zero Defects Culture based on Baldrige Performance Excellence Framework:

  • Create an ethical and socially responsible organization with good governance practices.
  • Define Vision, Mission, and Values and communicate it constantly to all stakeholders.
  • Direct resources to understand customers' needs and expectations.
  • Encourage use of state-of-the-art information management and knowledge management system.
  • Engage and energize employees to serve customers.
  • Support development of processes/systems to produce innovative products/services.
  • Lead supply chain management to create a sustainable organization with long-term growth.
Leadership commitment, engagement, involvement, and support are crucial in creating Zero Defects Organization Culture.

I concur with Luciana's observations that the responsibility clearly lies with the leadership team to manage their behavior to address spiritual, intellectual, physical, and emotional needs of people in their organizations.

The leadership is all about influencing, igniting, and inspiring ordinary people to do extra-ordinary things. It is up to the leadership team to elevate their organization to great heights with the help of all employees pulling in the same direction.

I look forward to learning from your experience in this area.