In 2009, my respected statistical colleague Ron Snee saw the need to transition quality efforts to a much bigger picture that he coined holistic improvement: a system that can successfully create and sustain significant improvements of any type, in any culture for any business.
Before the current era of trendy approaches, Joseph Juran’s approach was one of the few formal programs
available (His classic book Managerial Breakthrough is still a very good worthwhile read for its priceless empirical wisdom). This approach's implicit tolerance for the management status quo was a given. This resulted in needing excruciating formality and setting up a quality project sub-industry that became a formal arm of the organization.
Despite the rapid evolution of quality improvement theory over the past 60 years, the
same human issues that many times compromised the Juran approach's success remain ever-present .
Snee cites six issues that are still heavily entrenched in many organizational cultures allegedly committed to quality:
- Failing to design improvement approaches that require the active involvement of top management
- Focusing on training rather than improvement
- Failing to use top talent to conduct
improvement initiatives
- Failing to build the supporting infrastructure, including personnel skilled in improvement and management systems to guide improvement
- Failing to work on the right projects – those that deliver significant bottom-line results
- Failing to plan for sustaining the improvements at the beginning of the initiative.
Now, the fad of “big data” as a solution to all problems has become the current
smokescreen to avoid facing these issues. There is a famous W. Edwards Deming quote from the 1980s in reaction to an executive bragging that the company had just bought a three million dollar computer. Deming replied, “Too bad. What you needed was three hundred thousand dollars’ worth of brains.”
Improvement professionals have made huge strides in speaking the language of senior management. However, in many organizations, senior management still
does not know the fundamental lessons of quality and, frankly, shows no interest in learning (Other than, "Get to the punch-line and give me the 10 minute overview").
Promotions self-perpetuate the status quo. Could it be that few quality managers make it into senior management positions because senior management does not really believe in the quality concepts?
