A company with a highly developed culture of quality spends, on average, $350M less annually fixing mistakes than a company with a poorly developed one (Harvard Business Review, 2014). This fact is widely publicized in leadership texts and periodicals. As a result, most companies claim they have a culture of quality. The word quality is frequently used in meetings and in marketing literature. The word quality is also often found in training, job descriptions, and signs throughout the workplace. However, despite wide acceptance of the importance of quality culture, most firms fail to integrate the quality mindset multilaterally across the enterprise. Research has found that the traditional strategies to increase quality, such as monetary incentives, training, and best practice sharing, are not effective. Organizations that have a grassroots, peer-driven approach to advancing a culture of quality are the ones that succeed because they are effective at driving down the cost of poor quality and sustaining results.
Culture is manifested in collective behaviors and is the set of shared beliefs, attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterize an organization. Culture of quality is defined as an environment in which employees not only follow quality guidelines, but also consistently see others taking quality-focused actions, hear others talking about quality, and feel quality all around them. Employees at all levels of the organization, and across all functions, must “live” quality in order to achieve this ideal state. Employees throughout the organization must be trained in quality tools, reflect on failures, and work cross-functionally to solve problems. Companies that have achieved the true culture of quality, demonstrate three common traits: leadership commitment, employee ownership, and organization-wide continuous improvement.