C
ccochran
Gentleman,
Thanks for all your feedback. I especially enjoyed Jim Wynne's short version: "We're dying down here. Please stop counting the *$%!& money for a minute and get off your fat arse and help us." That basically sums it up. Quality Digest required around 2,000 words, so that accounts for the overall length. A real letter would have been considerably shorter. Very good point, though. Brevity is the soul of wit, as Polonious said.
Speaking the language of top management is of course critical. The language of top management isn't the only language, though. Their whole lexicon is focused on finance and accounting metrics, which often doesn't provide much guidance for the future. Sure, quality folks need to understand these bottom line results, but top management needs to understand that profit and revenue are the residues of doing a lot of other things well. You can stare at bottom line results for hours and still not know what to do about them. The more forwarding looking metrics (like customer feedback) will tell you exactly what to do about them. So, I guess my point is that we all need to become multilingual. Speaking one language and looking in only direction will guarantee trouble.
Fire away!
Craig
Thanks for all your feedback. I especially enjoyed Jim Wynne's short version: "We're dying down here. Please stop counting the *$%!& money for a minute and get off your fat arse and help us." That basically sums it up. Quality Digest required around 2,000 words, so that accounts for the overall length. A real letter would have been considerably shorter. Very good point, though. Brevity is the soul of wit, as Polonious said.
Speaking the language of top management is of course critical. The language of top management isn't the only language, though. Their whole lexicon is focused on finance and accounting metrics, which often doesn't provide much guidance for the future. Sure, quality folks need to understand these bottom line results, but top management needs to understand that profit and revenue are the residues of doing a lot of other things well. You can stare at bottom line results for hours and still not know what to do about them. The more forwarding looking metrics (like customer feedback) will tell you exactly what to do about them. So, I guess my point is that we all need to become multilingual. Speaking one language and looking in only direction will guarantee trouble.
Fire away!
Craig