Jim L. Smith

It’s a rare company that doesn’t want to implement a better quality system, resulting in performance excellence for their company, employees, customers and stockholders. However, the pursuit of quality is easier said than done.

The issue of implementing a lasting, meaningful quality transition is so important that I wanted to continue this discussion from last month.

Quality doesn’t just happen. It doesn’t come as a result of just the corner office, but of countless people in the organization. Achievement of a robust quality culture is an outcome of the combined efforts of the minds and hearts of everyone working together toward a common cause.

Certainly, quality professionals play an important role in their organization’s pursuit of improvement and customer satisfaction. However, managers must ‘walk the talk’ in pursuit of customer satisfaction.

Much of society has been taught to believe that failure is negative and results in the loss of much effort and resources. This is only true if we allow this thinking to become reality.