Save quality management!

The thesis: Disciplines behave like companies when faced with competition

Specialized disciplines such as sales, controlling or even quality management behave in a similar way to companies in a market economy environment. Professional disciplines as well as companies must

- create value,
- differentiate yourself from competition,
- and be significantly better in their discipline than generalists.
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Otherwise, they will be displaced and disappear.

The problem: QM loses focus

In my opinion, QM is increasingly losing its focus. And it should not have the focus on obtaining certificates and documentation requirements that it has among the general public. In fact, this is not added value, but often even destruction of value. QM is threatening to disintegrate — not in the short term, but in the long term. Becomes superfluous or displaced by other specialist disciplines. Just like a company with too little focus and too little added value.

1. Becoming empowered is an end in itself.

2. Quality is increasingly becoming “the good thing.”

3. QM loses its unique selling point (USP).

The starting point of quality management was to ensure high product quality for customers a few decades ago. It was well established that stable processes are conducive to high product quality. QM then focused on stable processes. And I add carefully:... and lost focus on product quality at least a bit.

ISO 9001 was developed somewhat less empirically, but with good intention and maximum effort, in the hope that it would positively influence the quality capacity and ultimately the quality of products. QM then focused on setting up QM systems and certificates. And I add carefully:... and lost focus on product quality a bit more.

In recent years in particular, it has been increasingly propagated (and with good reason) that the purpose and motivation of employees are decisive for achieving any goals. It is therefore about leadership quality. That is why many QMlers are currently focusing on improving leadership quality. And I add carefully:... and lose focus on product quality even more.

This list could be continued almost endlessly. Approaches and principles that were originally focused on product quality are often continued as an end in themselves in QM without questioning the target contribution. This goes so far that a number of QMlers and even more managers have difficulty even mentioning the actual goal of QM.

And the lowest common denominator of all known QM goals is thus prevailing among the public: ensuring a certificate and generating evidence. With questionable value. And breaking out of this image is extremely difficult for individual QMlers.

No focus, no effectiveness

On the other hand, QM is being defined ever larger and more comprehensively, primarily by training institutions and, to a certain extent, through standardization. In the course of total quality management, this is understandable, but it does not make any sense in terms of focus and USP. “Sustainability is of course an issue of quality” — and management quality too and process quality as well as organizational quality and resilience also and quality of life too and employee satisfaction, of course!? Can we agree that these are all important and good topics? However, if we call everything desirable “quality,” then QM is just “management for good,” but no longer a single discipline. No focus, no effectiveness. Or the quality manager is the better managing director. But is it really him? I don't think so. Because then he would be managing director.

There aren't many principles that have survived all management fashions. But there is one principle: You can only be truly successful and effective with a clear focus. This applies to companies, communities as well as individuals. And QM is in danger of losing its focus and thus its USP.

The solution: focus on customer satisfaction

I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that all mosaic pieces are falling back into place if we just mention QM, which significantly contributes to product quality in terms of customer satisfaction. Because, in accordance with the corporate quality understanding*, customer satisfaction leads to increased willingness to pay. If QM increases willingness to pay through product quality, real value creation takes place.

However, quality management itself cannot create quality. This is the result of value-added processes. Quality management can only have a positive effect on this in an advisory capacity. In my opinion, every (project-type) implementation of quality management should result in regular business and be free from the quality manager again. In static cases, I am even convinced that QM is superfluous in the long run when the rest of the organization has internalized and operationalized the ideas. Since products, markets and colleagues are constantly changing, the QMler can also create value in the long term — even though he is constantly working to become superfluous.

However, it is no easy task to find out which initiative, which project or which measure has the best effect in terms of customer satisfaction. This is because the search field goes far beyond audits, accuracy, stable processes, competence management and quality awareness, for example. We QMLers must learn to recognize and evaluate correlations between measures and product quality. Due to increasing digitization, measurability has never been easier than it is today. And if we can't measure, we simply have to estimate.

Evaluate effort and quality improvement

Here I recommend the planning poker principle, both for the relative estimation of effort and for the relative estimation of the increase in quality. The quotient of quality improvement and effort results in a priority. The projects with the best cost-benefit ratio are implemented with a work-in-progress limit in order not only to start projects, but to maximize project throughput.

In addition, an agile project approach, which is based on Lean Startup, for example, with the triad: Assumption — Metric — Experiment.

1. Assumption: Each action is based on an assumption, such as “We believe the xyz initiative will result in enthusiastic individual customers.”

2. Metric: A measure of project success is then defined, e.g. “At least three customers are enthusiastic about the new way of using xyz in the customer survey. ”

3rd experiment: Finally, the smallest possible (!) Experiment carried out to verify or falsify the assumption. If there is evidence of verification, the next major implementation iterations are sought until the project goal is finally achieved.

What would QM be and what would not be?

Yes, and what about the ISO 9001 certificate now? For most organizations, there is no significant relationship between certification and product quality, customer satisfaction, or willingness to pay. This means that certification and auditing with regard to ISO 9001 cannot be attributed to quality management, but to compliance.

And that is the crux of the matter: We should ban the fulfillment of requirements for which the customer is not prepared to pay and therefore does not create value, from QM and assign it to compliance. Compliance therefore consists of meeting requirements for products and organizations for which the customer is not prepared to pay explicitly.

management systems

Are management systems now compliance? No, not at all. Because a management system is the sum of all existing rules of the game in a company, whether documented or not. And these rules also serve to ensure that the customer gets what they want. In reality, however, what is developed under the heading “management system” often makes no contribution to product quality and is actually compliance. Fortunately, I have already been able to assist many companies in further developing their management system and thus significantly increasing product quality. Quality management is actually carried out here, which deserves its name.

Increasing process efficiency

Is increasing process efficiency now quality management or not? Here too, I would like to stick to my definition (as a suggestion): If the customer is willing to pay for process efficiency (e.g. in a service process), then we can talk about quality management. If only internal process costs fall, it is simply process management. Of course, these disciplines are not selective, but have significant overlaps.

Management quality

And what about leadership quality, purpose, mission and vision? That's definitely quality, isn't it? I would say: rather no. The correlation with customer satisfaction is not high enough, and the correlation with other goals is significantly greater. The importance is immense, but the appropriate discipline is called business administration or general management.

improvement projects

In some companies, the QMler takes on all types of internal improvement projects. Is that quality management? According to my definition, only the proportion of projects that have a significant positive impact on customer satisfaction. All other projects must be assigned to other disciplines. And if it's a very colorful mix, then the correct role name might simply be “in-house consultant.”

Quality vs. compliance

Smaller companies will note that they can't afford separate quality and compliance managers. This is clear and leads to a person taking on multiple roles. At this stage, I'll leave open whether combining compliance and quality management makes sense. What is certain is that these disciplines require completely different personality and competence profiles and, in my opinion, the salary of a QMler should be twice as high due to the value-adding effect. However, if the two roles are carried out by one person, they should only invest the necessary energy in compliance and as much energy as possible in value-adding QM.

The vision: the value-adding QMler

Imagine for a moment that QMLers are perfectly trained to identify those projects and initiatives that sustainably improve the product quality and thus the willingness of customers to pay with the highest level of efficiency. They would be able to implement appropriate projects in an agile and highly effective manner, to accompany the change and to ensure integration into the daily routine of the line. They would be excellent in-house consultants with a focus on customer satisfaction and willingness to pay. Thanks to good digitization, the QMler would have a data basis to measure the effect of projects and initiatives and to make the increased willingness of customers to pay plausible while maintaining the same costs of service provision.

QM would no longer have an image problem. The training of a QMler would then be more of a course of study than additional training, would be industry-specific and would have a crystal-clear focus. This could create a high level of expertise and excellence in this specialist discipline, which cannot even be displaced by other specialist disciplines. Due to the clear focus on added value and, ideally, on the measurability of this, I trust this type of quality manager to consistently earn 6-digit annual salaries. Standardization can play a role in this, but it doesn't have to.

A short epilogue

I think ISO 9001, in its current version, is a very good standard in terms of craftsmanship. In the past, the certification system was very valuable for the international harmonization of quality understanding and for building trust. However, the entire system of ISO 9001 certifications is in trouble due to incentive and control mechanisms, so that an ISO 9001 certificate is no longer meaningful.

Through technical alternatives to building trust between customers and suppliers, I expect the principle of ISO 9001 certificates to lose importance and ultimately disappear from the market in the next 10 years. I could imagine immutable (blockchain) evaluation portals for companies and services. Even today, a Google, Kununu or Amazon review is actually more meaningful than an ISO 9001 certificate. At that point, it will be exciting to see how quality management will hold its own in competition between specialist disciplines when ISO 9001 compliance no longer plays a role.

*) When defining quality, I like to stick to the entrepreneurial quality concept that Prof. Robert Schmitt developed with us around 2006 at RWTH Aachen: Quality is the intersection between explicit and implicit customer requirements “target” and the “actual” characteristics provided. I am also a fan of seeing price as a sign of quality. With this definition, it is expected that quality and customer satisfaction will correlate extremely strongly. A good measure here can be the Net Promoter Score (NPS).