Building a Quality Culture

I keep surprising myself.

I started a LinkedIn Group the other day. It's called Building a Quality Culture. It’s meant to serve as a gathering place for people who like to talk about Quality stuff and who are really motivated to build a Quality Culture at their workplace.?

Here’s where you can find it: https://www.dhirubhai.net/groups/14113382/

If you’re interested, please join. And tell your friends and colleagues, too.

Obviously, if the goal is to build Quality Cultures, we need everyone onboard…So…if there are people in other parts of your organization - operations, leadership, R&D, etc.…who you think might be keen, please let them know too. We can learn from their insights, but also they can learn from seeing where our motivations are coming from and what makes us toss and turn at night. Win win!?

I’m borderline obsessed about helping people get cracking on making this culture shift in their organizations. It’s so blindingly obvious to the Quality types that everyone wins when we can adopt an organization-wide Quality Mindset. The trick, of course, is somehow getting that message to the people who need to hear it.?

I believe that success at building a Quality Culture comes down to three main things:

1. Clarity

First, we need to take a step back and make sure we have clarity: Clarity of purpose.

Why does our organization exist? Why does my job exist? What is the purpose of my company and my role? And of all the other roles?

It’s shocking to do an exercise like this. Even with the leadership team, it’s sometimes hard to get a consensus, or clear answer, on the simple question of “What’s our purpose?”...Literally, “Why do we exist?”

But without this kind of clarity, it is nearly impossible to build a Quality Culture.

2. Communication

Are my communication skills where they need to be? It’s a big job having the skills to communicate with everyone in our organization. Have I got the tools and understanding of human behaviour, group behaviour, the brain, my organization, and language to make sure my communication is effective?

3. Trust

Have I spent the time building and nurturing my work relationships? Have I made this a priority? Do I even know what this looks like??

In order to build a Quality Culture, we need to have some sort of shared vision. Some very clear North Star that is relevant and motivating for everyone throughout the organization.?

We want to be able to help everyone see that not only are the business objectives intimately linked to the quality policy and objectives (and vice versa), but that EVERYTHING is then linked to The Purpose. And this is what is then used to inspire all the mental shifts and most critically, the behaviours, that we need in order to move ourselves closer to a Quality Culture.

The tough part is that we need to have patience. We’re trying to make changes at a fundamental level and there will be resisters, no doubt about it. And as Kathy Walsh always says, “People are messy”. She’s right.?

We have to deal with messy people. And we have to be patient, knowing that change of this sort takes time.?

So, what? Time’s going to pass anyway. We can leave things as they are, or we can do our darndest to make a positive impact in our organizations.?

Who’s in?

Thanks for reading!

Don’t forget to join my group if that’s your sort of thing! Hope to see you there!?

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