Strategies for Managing Change and Quality Culture

Understanding the Concerns of Potential Resisters

• Fear: People fear the unknown.
• Loss of Control: Change can threaten their sense of security.
• Uncertainty: People like to know where they stand.
• More Work: Change sometimes means more work. People may have to learn new information or develop new skills.

Maintaining a Quality Culture

1. Maintain awareness: Keep quality as a key cultural issue through regular dissemination of quality goals and results.
2. Demonstrate leadership: Ensure management is "walking the walk" as well as "talking the talk."
3. Empower employees: Encourage self-development and initiative. Design jobs for self-control and foster self-directed teamwork.
4. Keep employees involved: Make it easy to recommend improvements and involve staff in product and process design reviews.
5. Recognize and reward: Nurture the culture by rewarding behaviors with salary increases, bonuses, incentives, and promotions.

Understanding Customer-Defined Quality

1. Prioritize the customer: The organization’s survival depends on the customer.
2. Cultivate reliability: Reliable customers buy repeatedly. Satisfaction is the foundation of this loyalty.
3. Ensure satisfaction: High-quality products are essential. Because satisfaction must be renewed with every purchase, continual improvement is mandatory.
4. Establish focus: Put employees in direct contact with customers and empower them to act to ensure satisfaction.

Communicating With Customers

• Product enhancements: By understanding customer operations, suppliers can add attributes that increase product value.
• Improved productivity: Suppliers can propose process modifications that boost customer efficiency.
• Internal improvements: Insights from customer operations can lead to better quality, productivity, and design within your own organization.