What does an organisation with a mature culture of quality look like? In this ppt presentation, Richard Green, Former Head of Technical Services at CQI, explains what a culture of quality looks like, the essential building blocks and how to achieve this. More information can be found: http://quality.eqms.co.uk/blog/6-critical-building-blocks-of-a-quality-culture

1. EMBEDDING A CULTURE OF
QUALITY
Richard Green

2. THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF A CULTURE OF
QUALITY
What does an organisation with a mature culture of quality look like?
It is an organisation built for quality
Leaders are quality advocates
Employees are empowered
It is customer-centric operation
Collaborative working is the norm
Continual Improvement is taken as a given.

3. THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF A CULTURE OF
QUALITY
Each of these six characteristics will be evident to some degree or other in
our own organisations
Few organisations will have developed their culture of quality to its full
potential however
If we want to increase our own performance in these areas what practical
steps can we take?

4. AN ORGANISATION BUILT FOR QUALITY
Recommended actions:
 Align the business strategy and the quality strategy
 Implement a process approach
 Implement a performance management system
 Develop a quality plan which translates quality policy into practical
deliverables, revise through time
 Forums are created at various levels in the organisation to discuss quality
improvement opportunities.
 Everyone has a channel open to suggest quality improvements

5. LEADERS WHO ARE QUALITY ADVOCATES
Recommended actions:
 Ensure leaders update employees and stakeholders on quality progress
and future plans. Do not delegate if possible.
 Ensure leaders act as role models, if it’s obvious leaders are only providing
lip service to quality why should employees bother with it?
 Ensure leaders dedicate resource to quality improvement, people,
equipment and money.
 Recognise and promote individuals who are bought into quality
improvement
 Monitor quality performance and act on results.

6. EMPLOYEES WHO ARE EMPOWERED
Recommended actions:
 Communicate the ‘golden thread’
 Ensure employees receive the necessary training and support to enable
them to carry out their quality improvement responsibilities
 Assign quality related authorities in employee job descriptions
 Give employees ‘space’ to explore quality improvements (3M)
 Reward innovative thinking
 See failure as an opportunity to learn, not to blame
 Ensure every employee has a ‘quality voice’.

7. CUSTOMER CENTRIC OPERATION
Recommended actions:
 Continually assess internal and external customer needs
 Monitor, assess, report and improve on customer satisfaction for all
products and service
 Refine and improve customer satisfaction measures
 Involve both internal and external customers in quality improvement
activities
 Use customer data to define new product and service offerings
 Incorporate customer feedback into the performance appraisal process
 Benchmark your customer service performance against your peers.

8. COLLABORATIVE WORKING IS THE NORM
Recommended actions:
 Create cross departmental improvement teams based on the best
individuals for the job, not who happens to be available
 Ensure quality lessons learned are communicated extensively
 Ensure someone / some group retains a helicopter view of the various
quality initiatives underway – idea sharing, resource programming

9. CONTINUAL IMPROVEMENT IS TAKEN AS A
GIVEN
Recommended actions:
 Seek small improvements everyday, don’t just focus on
breakthrough improvement
 Think about introducing a recognised improvement methodology -
Lean, Six Sigma, Systems Thinking, P-D-C-A.
 Use your performance data to identify improvement opportunities
 Use your performance data to drive better decision
 Quantify and communicate the benefits arising from
improvements.

10. SUMMARY
Changing an organisations culture of quality will take time.
Incremental advancement is likely to yield better long term results than
attempting to force radical change through quickly
Leadership have a critical role to play not just in terms of making this
happen but also in terms of setting the right example
Sometimes sticks will be required as well as carrots
The benefits of realising a culture of quality are enormous.

11. FURTHER HELP & SUPPORT
Qualsys Limited
Aizlewoods Mill,
Nursery Street,
Sheffield,
S3 8GG
emily.hill@qualsys.co.uk
+44 (0)114 282 3338
enquiries@kingsfordconsultancyservices.co.uk
+44 (0)1225 400 435