“Be Quality”

Published for the American Institute of Architects Practice Management e-Digest, July 2006

Our ancestors used survival as the basis for determining success, constantly reading the environment and responding to it, which over time led to an automatic triggering into action. It might have looked something like, “See lion…RUN!” In today’s business world, we continue using the same approach – each responding to our world via external signals, and jumping into action before our interpretation of what is happening reaches our consciousness. In an organization, this becomes quite complicated as our varying perceptions of these external signals limit our ability to forge cohesive, high-performing teams.

Organizational greatness exists. I have been fortunate enough to work with some renegade organizations generating their own distinct paths to greatness. They are recognizable from the time you enter their office or facility. You can see it, feel it, hear it in the language being used, and quickly recognize that their secret to success is interwoven into the fabric of their very being. Everyone just seems to really “get it,” and their financial metrics reflect greatness as well.

I am often asked, “What constitutes organizational greatness?” and have had several companies inquire to my willingness to tell their story as I did with the Fish Market. I developed a litmus test of sorts to qualify those organizations demonstrating greatness and simply being quality. First, they have an extraordinary product and/or service. I know if that is in place, there is a solid infrastructure supporting the quality of product or service. It may include a problem-solving strategy (like TRIZ), integrated and continuous process improvement strategies, and a clearly defined performance management plan that is aligned with every other aspect of business.

Second, all employees are treated impeccably well. It is one thing to have an extraordinary product or service, but if people within the organization are treated poorly (or there are unaccounted turnover or morale issues), it indicates symptoms of problems in the performance management realm. Happy employees tend to be an outcome of leadership creating a environment where workers are allowed generate success and are not afraid to take risks.

And last, they must have an expansive vision that goes beyond the boundaries of the organization. I am not referring to community service, although I find that to be highly respectable and necessary in today’s world. The type of expansive vision I am referring to tells me that all who work within the organization see themselves – and the organization itself – as part of something bigger than the products produced or the services rendered.

There are many organizations operating in mediocrity, searching for the proverbial silver bullet that will alleviate their quality woes, grow their teams, or increase market share. They create goals of grandeur without ever truly recognizing what it looks like when they get there. They start doing many activities and investing huge amounts of resources into quality initiatives and management develop programs and never have a conversation around what it means to achieve greatness.

I find most organizations are doing a great job of doing quality without a recognition of what it means to simply be quality. To be quality, it is immersed and integrated into the thinking of every person affiliated with the organization, including suppliers and customers. Senior leaders and workers are not spending time and resources trying to figure out how to do it or what the next tool is they need to hire a consultant to implement – because it becomes who they are, the “what to do” to get there comes quite naturally. The actions and behaviors become a reflection of the collective thinking of the organization. An organization that thinks well together, performs well together – and the results are simply the outcome of better thinking and behaviors aligned to that thinking.

Unfortunately, most senior leaders of organizations have not figured out that they cannot emulate the greatness of another organization by simply copying the practices or doing what the other is doing. Greatness requires delving into deeper waters to discover guiding principles within their own collective thinking that drive the actions and behaviors that allow extraordinary results. It requires new thinking that becomes the basis of the habits we deploy automatically. Quite simply, thinking about thinking results in results! Greatness is generated by every individual every day in every transaction between people and the processes they manage. I urge senior leaders to stop doing quality and start being quality from the inside out.