What is Quality and why is it important to your small business?
You may be aware (and I have talked about it before) of Total Quality Management (TQM)
Total Quality Management (TQM) is a management framework based on the belief that an organization can build long-term success by having all its members, from low-level workers to its highest ranking executives, focus on improving quality and, thus, delivering customer satisfaction.
In manufacturing then there are other buzzwords you will have heard such as Six Sigma / ISO standards etc – it comes back to the same core idea though. As with most of these principles – although if you read about them it is always in the context of large businesses – we can adopt and adapt them for small businesses or charities like ours.
You’ll note – again – how the last three words are “delivering customer satisfaction” – which has to be the main driver behind everything we do!
I talk endlessly with clients about the customer journey these days – it is so relevant to ALL of us. So to put it in the context of a charity too – making sure that everything is “done right” all the way through the journey is so crucial to winning and retaining customers – or donors and supporters!
When I worked in the pharmaceutical industry I had a role in production planning for a number of years and that entailed sourcing packaging and getting contract manufacturers to make products. The QA(Quality Assurance) department was the bane of my life! They checked everything – before, during and after the manufacturing process – and the standards were very high (as you would expect). But the two lessons I learned were:
- Quality matters – obviously medicines are regulated and need to be safe – but they also QA’d the hell out of my labels!
- Working WITH the QA department was the best solution to prevent it being a royal PITA. Good communication and early discussion of plans and issues arising was the key (that’s not really a huge surprise though is it!)
I mentioned labels – labels on medicines are quite important. So they would control for the legibility – sometimes rejecting a design because the font was too small – and they weren’t keen on light type on dark backgrounds either. Something I still have as a bugbear about! The actual content was of course important. But they also checked to ensure the label met the company brand standards – colours, paper stock, everything – because that mattered too.
Just an aside – Quality Control is about sampling and checking a production run to see if the number of issues is within limits – Quality Assurance sets the limits!
The thing is – Quality should be part of every single thing we do. It matters. And is has to matter to us and to everyone in “our organisation”
So if you have a VA or a volunteer – they have to be on the same page as you – and you have to have a “culture” (I have talked about this before too) where getting it right is important to everyone.
One of the core concepts of TQM is the right of ANY employee to shout out when something isn’t right. On Japanese production lines they can stop the entire process to make sure that the issue is sorted.
This is huge. It’s huge because stopping a production line costs money. (But Cat, you cry, sending out crap cars costs money too). EXACTLY. But I think we would all agree there are companies out there who are focused on the short term cost of closing down production rather than the longer term cost of selling rubbish cars.
I have run workshops on Outsourcing for your small business where we talked about how enlarging your team (even through using third party suppliers) can bring new perspective and new skills. They can also bring a new fresh pair of eyes to everything you do – to make sure that you are not sending out stuff that is below par.
Or you can ask others! One of the features in my membership group is an Ask the Group slot on a Thursday. This is where you can ask the other members to cast an eye over something – a document or a web page and get some feedback. It helps to have someone else check things over – for spelling and grammar and also from the point of view of the “avatar” – what will the ideal customer think of the document?
If you have a team then you need to
- Let them know what standards they are working to
- Encourage them to speak up if they see something out of kilter
- Encourage them to improve systems (Kaizen – continuous improvement)
It is so important that they know they have that permission to speak up if they can see something that needs improvement.
You may not be ready for ISO standard accreditation for your business yet but there are things you can do and steps you can take to improve quality standards in your organisation. Here is a short checklist to download to help you.
If you have comments or questions then please do get in touch.