Leadership and Quality Culture

Successful leaders must be able to lead people toward organizational goals. Furthermore, leaders must make sure that the employees properly carry out the critical activities within the organization. Similar to all organizational activities, leadership plays an integral role in the quality initiatives of the organization. Only through a strong leadership and management commitment, organizations can take solid steps toward meeting and exceeding the highest standards of quality.

Leadership plays an important role in quality management practices. In other words, in order to maintain quality management standards, organizations must have the highest standards of leadership. The concept of quality management requires a high level of participation and teamwork throughout the organization and in all activities. Without the required leadership support, organizations are much less likely to be successful in their quality-related efforts. Commitment from the leaders of the organization is probably the most important way to implement and maintain the culture required for high-quality management standards. Otherwise, organizations cannot achieve their quality goals. When it comes to quality management, required motivation and commitment is achieved by through extensive participation of all employees in the decision- making and problem-solving activities of the organization.

Concepts of leadership and teamwork require consideration of a few questions that are fundamental to the management style and philosophy:How do you communicate with your staff?

Autocratic management refers to an approach whereby managers are mainly concerned with increasing workplace efficiency and pay little attention to people within the organization. Autocratic managers typically make decisions without obtaining input from their subordinates. Autocratic management style mainly relies on the positional power created by the managerial role.

Participative management is a different approach compared to autocratic management because, unlike autocratic managers, participative managers are primarily concerned with people but might strive to balance this concern with the business concerns of the organization. Participative managers encourage their subordinates to participate in the decision-making process. In quality management, participative management plays an integral role since almost all quality approaches and practices rely heavily on employee participation at all levels.

From the quality management standpoint, leadership refers to the ability to inspire people to make a total, willing, and voluntary commitment to accomplishing or exceeding organizational goals. Another definition of leadership in regards to quality management defines leadership as the creation of a vision and environment which inspire people to contribute to organizational goals and nurtures both their capability to do so and their well- being within their endeavors.

Leaders inspire their followers to commit to the goals, vision, and mission of the organization. Following are the leadership techniques used by the leaders to inspire their followers:

Aligning personnel with the vision: Simply conveying the vision to the personnel is not sufficient. True leaders help their followers to see why the vision is commendable and worthy of their commitment.

Provide a sense of direction: Leaders make sure that their followers know where the organization is trying to go and what the organization is trying to achieve. This is possible only through a solid understanding of the vision and mission of the organization.

Effective and frequent communication: Leaders keep their followers up-to-date and well-informed. Because, only by doing so, leaders can make sure that their personnel have the information required to achieve top performance.

Empowerment: Leaders empower their personnel to do the jobs they were hired to do by (1) identifying the parameters within which they may make unilateral decisions, (2) involving them in the decision- making process, (3) encouraging them to think critically and creatively to find ways to continually improve quality, cost, and service, (4) encouraging them to take the initiative to solve problems, and (5) treating mistakes as learning opportunities.

Training and mentoring: Leaders devote themselves to the development of their personnel through solid mentoring and training. Problems are seen as learning opportunities and weaknesses are seen as a target for improvement.

Characteristics of good leaders are; Balanced Commitment, Positive Role Model, Good Communication Skills, Positive Influence, Persuasiveness

The basic steps of the leadership cycle are as follows:

• Challenge what is: Leaders keep their eyes open to the assumptions, beliefs, and practices that shape today’s results and try to answer the question whether these support or prevent the progress.
• Imagine what will be: Leaders think about what the future could be in a creative way. They also develop a clear picture of the future that they will help to create.
• Make it happen: Leaders mobilize their followers for making the change happen.

The principles are as follows:

Embody the values of quality: Although it may seem like an obvious statement, leaders themselves must believe in the central tenets of quality. The leader must be devoted to the principles of quality and (s) he must focus on customers and stress their importance at every opportunity. Leaders must embody the principles of quality in all of their actions; thus, personnel will always take their cues as to the priorities of the organization from the way.

Create unity of purpose: One of the most important roles of leaders is to generate and convey the vision and mission in a clear, accurate, and compelling manner. It is important that the vast majority of the employees need to believe in and commit to the attainment of the vision.

Focus on the process, not the outcome: It could be argued that the majority of the leaders and managers have focused on the outcome measures such as quotas, acceptable quality levels, but they generally neglect the important issue of how the results are obtained. If the mechanisms for delivering good or poor results are not well understood, then it will almost be impossible to understand why results change, or how to improve current levels. Thus, a good leader always looks to understand the system that generates results and to drive improvement in the system.

Motivation of individuals: Business means people. Thus, the role that individuals play in the quality processes is very crucial. Motivating the employees is a key success factor in quality management since achieving the organizational goals would be possible only through highly motivated employees.

Control and participation: Participative leaders see themselves not as strict controllers and policers of behaviors and decisions, but as coaches with respect to helping subordinates make good decisions, and supporting them in taking the actions they deem necessary.

Internal customers mainly refer to the employees working for the organization whose work depends on the work of other employees. Employees’ understanding of the organization’s goals and commitment to the customer must be complete. This can be assured by following a three-step process that includes (1) an employee survey, (2) an employee training program, and (3) regular communication sessions to continually reinforce the organizational goals. Employee survey, which is the first step, should be designed to provide an assessment of how the employee feels about the organization and how (s)he perceives her/his role to the customer. An organization must also provide its employees with relevant training and education in order to develop their skills and abilities. Also, frequent and healthy communication between the leaders of the organization and employees is very crucial. Such a communication program ensures employees to stay focused on the goals of the organization.

External customers are those who purchase or use an organization’s products or services. Thus, expectations of the customers must be met and even exceeded. Needs and expectations of the customers must be assessed by utilizing the input obtained from all customer contact personnel.

The method by which the input is provided can be reactive or proactive. Reactive input is in the form of customer complaints or from interpreting customer purchase orders or sales inquiries. Proactive input is collected through visits to the customer, visits to your facility by your customer, customer satisfaction surveys, and by cross-functional teams consisting of employees from customer and supplier facilities. Both activities are crucial for collecting input from the customers. It is important to note that these inputs must be effectively used as a part of the strategic plan.

First, leadership for quality must have a focus on customers. In other words, it is important to remember that an organization’s primary goal is to meet and even exceed customer expectations. Another key element of leadership for quality is that leaders must recognize the structure of work because leadership for quality requires that work processes be analyzed to determine their appropriate structural makeup (organization, order of steps, tools used, motion required, etc.). Continuous improvement of the structural makeup is an important goal for the leader. Teamwork is another important element of leadership for quality. Leaders must understand and convey the message that a team of people working together in harmony toward a common goal can easily outperform a group of individuals working toward their own ends. Leadership for quality requires team building and teamwork. Finally, emphasis on best practices and peak performance is another key element that stresses leader’s role in ensuring the absolute best possible performance from their personnel, processes, and products.

PDCA leadership model cycle starts with the “Check” phase because the development of the plan for quality improvements calls for an understanding of the current situation. In other words, this phase tries to answer the question “Where are we now?”. The second phase of the PDCA leadership model cycle is the “Act” phase and it consists of two elements: Suggestions and motivation. Top management’s participation in this phase is very crucial since its participation conveys a message to the whole organization that quality and quality improvement are the primary focus. “Plan” is the third phase in the PDCA leadership model and it consists of two elements: Defining the quality goals and policies, and design of the quality plans. Finally, the last phase of the PDCA leadership model is the “Do” phase that consists of two elements: communication and education. The final quality plan should be communicated to everyone concerned in the organization and the required education must be provided

According to one definition, organizational culture is the sum total of the intellectual, constitutional and creative values produced by a firm’s people, as well as its knowledge and skills, behavior patterns, customs, and value judgements, procedures and departments which, in their structural inter-association and organization, represent the work content of its people in a certain period of time or era. Another definition suggests that organizational culture is the amalgam of shared values, behavior patterns, mores, symbols, attitudes and normative ways of conducting business that, more than its products or services, differentiate it from other companies.

Organizational culture is formed by a number of elements:

• Behaviors based on people interactions.
• Norms resulting from working groups.
• Dominant values adopted by the organization.
• Rules of the game for ‘getting on’.
• The climate.

From the cultural standpoint, any organization needs a vision framework that includes its guiding philosophy, core values and beliefs, and a purpose. These elements should be combined into a mission statement that provides a solid description of how things will be like when it has been achieved. The guiding philosophy drives the entire organization and is primarily shaped by the leaders through their thoughts and actions. The core values and beliefs refers to the organization’s basic principles about what is important in business, its conduct, its social responsibility and its response to changes in the environment. Finally, the purpose stems from the vision and core values and beliefs, and should openly convey how the organization will fulfill its role.

An organization’s quality culture refers to the opinions, beliefs, traditions, and practices concerning quality. Although it is hard to quantify an organization’s culture, it is important to assess the culture since it has a profound impact on the quality produced by the organization. Without an understanding of the cultural elements of the quality, significant and lasting improvements in quality levels are unlikely. Organizations can benefit from focus groups and written questionnaires in order to assess their quality culture. Failure to establish and assess a solid quality culture might create serious problems for the organizations. Furthermore, it could be argued that such failures happen quite often and the majority of these problems occur for just a few basic reasons related to organizational culture and corporate quality programs.

There are five critical success factors for developing a quality culture:

Providing goals and measurement: It is important to develop quality goals and measurement at all levels that are aligned with the mission and the quality strategy of the organization.

Evidence of top management commitment: Management commitment to quality and evidence of management leadership on quality issues are both critical for the successful implementation of the quality strategies. In other words, the commitment and involvement of management need to be demonstrated and visible.