“Total Quality Management” implies action and efforts to improve quality and service. Many of these efforts are simply ineffective. Canada’s Conference Board conducted several international studies of Total Quality Management - one study showed a total of seven companies out of every ten in North America fail to provide an effective “total quality strategy”. Don’t assume that TQM is another short-lived fad though - not many North American companies have even tried Total Quality Management. Many speak of utilizing TQM, but only actually implement PQM (or Partial Quality Management).

Lou Holtz, a football coach for Notre Dame has observed that people often say and promise more than they will actually accomplish. In spite of all the things actually “said” and promised in the form of catchy slogans, impassioned speeches, clever advertising, well-marketed videos, pressing sales pitches, pretty brochures, quality and service provided by most companies and organizations still suffers a great deal.

How can your company become more action than talk and make the jump from PQM to TQM? It’s very difficult. Here are a few helpful pointers:

Involve your Senior Management! - Lip service (not even passionate) and permission are not enough. The bosses’ visible priorities become the priorities of managers and supervisors. Improvement of service, and the quality of services are often relegated from top level, to middle level - who relegates it to the bottom level. Finning, Ltd in Vancouver (largest Caterpillar dealer in the world), Jim Shepard (CEO) and the executives have taken the initiative to be the first to take all of the service and quality training that all other employees receive. Not only that, they often train and teach the sessions to their employees as well.

Teams for Support and Focus - At the center of many of today’s high-volume organizations are work groups and departmental, branch, process improvement or progress teams. Many managers make the mistake of having more teams than they are needed. Most medium and large companies cannot host more than a handful of teams in their first few years. Organizations that are ill-prepared find that their improvement teams clash with the “old guard” managers and supervisors - these employees often feel that coaches belong in sports arenas, and the term “fostering innovation” is synonymous with “If I want to hear your ideas, I will tell you what to say”. Suggestions made to realign systems that are inhibiting quality and processes that are cross-function receive a lukewarm reception at best by these “old-guard” specialists and managers that install and micromanage them.

Reporting and Planning - quality and service improvement needs to be approached with rigor and discipline - the same found in proper business planning. A manager who merely tosses extra staff, more money, or more training at their improvement activities has whimsical expectations - and deserves the whimsical results in service and quality. An organization that is effective can spend months coordinating between management, work teams, unions and board members, and sometimes customers and suppliers to create a strategic quality plan. The measurement of quality and service, and the reporting systems, are treated with the same discipline as financial statements.

Balanced and Broad Approach - One sure indication of PQM is excessive reliance on just a few improvement techniques and tools. Good implementation uses many techniques from fine examples of customer service: quality improvement, as well as an increased and understood perception of value - the improvement of processes from all levels by gathering, monitoring and analyzing data that is critical to performance (known at Xerox as “management based on fact”), and development of the organization, which can be accomplished by developing leadership and company culture.

Building Both Knowledge and Skills - A ton of videos, slide trays, and five pounds in manuals and books delivered by a presenter who is simply dynamic can teach team members and leaders about the dynamics of a group or process management. However, this approach does not help participants learn how to focus meetings, or resolve conflict. When improving our physical fitness, it is understood that ideas of common sense are one thing, but the method of applying common sense to practice is an entirely different process. Technology that training programs use often is ineffective. It can leave the participants enlightened, excited, and aware. However, it does not leave the participant more competent.

When Total Quality Management is properly executed, there are dramatic and extraordinary results. The transition from PQM requires a lot of consistency, discipline, and the formation of new habits. It is comparable to a move from a life of yo-yo dieting to an actual lifestyle change which results in long-term, concrete benefits. It must be a long-term and permanent change within the company.