How do I become effective and valued as a quality manager?

If I have a clear goal, then I would also like to use an indicator to see whether I have come closer to that goal. Nothing else is an indicator and we know that from sports, for example. Conversely, I am afraid that a lack of an indicator often indicates that there is also no clear goal.

Therefore, create absolute clarity of goals for your management. And the discussion about the right metric will sharpen your goal.

Get along with it

• as a service provider (“What can I do that serves your management goals? “)
• as a consultant (“I can offer to do abc to reach xyz”)
• and NEVER get abusive (“I know how management works — you just have to believe me and follow me”), especially not with standard arguments.

Clarify the one central goal for your role and the one key measure: “What would be the ideal key figure that would make my performance measurable, regardless of whether you can measure it or not? ”

You make yourself broken and ineffective with measures such as

• quality
• customer satisfaction
• Defect or quality costs

because they are the result of the entire organization. You have no or not enough influence on this. The result will be: “Our quality manager is responsible for quality.” Guaranteed burnout.

Not broken, but as a quality manager, you are making yourself up with metrics such as

• Audit discrepancies
• Receiving a certificate

because these metrics have no (significant) impact on the quality of your organization's products and services. Guaranteed frustration. No appreciation.

For example, it is good to measure all managers proportionally in terms of quality/customer satisfaction/error costs, so that everyone feels responsible for quality. Quality management can then be measured by quality improvement. This results in an advisory role that managers welcome. At least as long as the consulting service helps managers achieve their goals.

But beware: This consulting service is not easy. But effective and meaningful.

I am optimistic that you will find a measure that can actually be measured. Because hardly anything has changed as drastically in recent years as the measurability of everything possible. A prime example is marketing, which wasn't long ago that every measurability was denied to it. Today, marketing is one of the most measurable disciplines.

And why just one measure? The fewer measurement variables, the clearer the task is. The more impact you have on the measurement variable. The more clearly you can optimize your activity for effectiveness towards this goal. Push for the one measure — the one goal. In this way, you are taking a big step towards order clarity, role clarity, effectiveness, appreciation and meaning.