Top Management & Improvement Processes

John Broomfield

Staff member
Super Moderator
#21
Top management should build a relationship with their employees.
Top management doesn’t want to intimidate employees so employees will follow them.
Top management doesn’t want to control employees into compliance.
Top management doesn’t want to terrify you into compliance.
Instead, top management spends time with employees.
Top management will win employees trust.
Top management will expose management’s heart to employees.
Management will pour their life into employees.
In other words, they’ll love the employees.

That’s the way to drive a management system.
Like parents and their children?
 
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John Broomfield

Staff member
Super Moderator
#22
Like parents and their children?
...or commanders and their soldiers?

Quality Management Principle 2 - Leadership (showing the importance of understanding and showing commitment to requirements):

"Leaders establish unity of purpose (requirements) and direction (requirements) of the organization. They should create and maintain the internal environment in which employees can become fully involved in achieving the organization's objectives (requirements)."

Leaders at least do the following to apply this principle:

1. Be proactive and lead by example (show commitment to the requirements).
2. Understand and respond to changes in the external environment (new requirements).
3. Consider the needs (requirements) of all stakeholders including customers, owners, employees, suppliers, local communities and society at large.
4. Establish a clear vision of the organization’s future.
5. Establish shared values and ethical role models (requirements) at all levels of the organization.
6. Build trust and eliminate fear (blame not the employee but the system for failing to meet requirements).
7. Provide employees with the required resources and freedom to act with responsibility and accountability (requirements).
8. Inspire, encourage and recognize employees' contributions (love).
9. Promote open and honest communication (a requirement).
10. Educate, train and coach employees (to monitor their processes, and use and improve the system).
11. Set challenging goals and targets (requirements), and
12. Implement a strategy (requirements) to achieve these goals and targets (requirements).

Although the environment created by leaders is extremely important, our questioner is asking about top management's improvement processes.
 
J

JaneB

#23
Top management should build a relationship with their employees.
Top management doesn’t want to intimidate employees so employees will follow them.
Top management doesn’t want to control employees into compliance.
Top management doesn’t want to terrify you into compliance.
Instead, top management spends time with employees.
Top management will win employees trust.
Top management will expose management’s heart to employees.
Management will pour their life into employees.
In other words, they’ll love the employees.

That’s the way to drive a management system.
I think there are some interesting points, but I don't agree with the summary of 'love the employees'. Now, I've been accused at times of being idealistic in the Cove, but here I'm going to be a devil's advocate. And say that you could have an absolutely ecstatically happy, trusting set of employees and a serious 'love fest' going on between employees and top management... but still not have an effective quality management system.

Personally, I am of the opinion that mutual respect and trust between employees and management pays a lot of dividends, both tangible and intangible, but I am also very well aware of - and have seen! - some organisations where they're all very happy with each other but the system, she ain't working so well.

On a slightly different note, I don't like to talk in terms of 'driving' a system - I think leadership doesn't drive. It leads. And to me, driving someone or something and leading someone/something are different. Often there's far too much driving going on and not enough real leading

My posting crossed John's - the various examples he's talking about are the sort of things I'm meaning too.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
S

sadananda_pvc

#24
Allow me to correct: Top management should must drive the management system.

Stijloor.
Quality Management System itself is the TOOL for Improvement, Where the Tool is handled and operated by Top Management. It is Top Management responsibility to take A-LOT out of QMS by "Empowering employee to provide full potential" to "Deliver high Quality Products and Services" Which will "Meet or Exceed the Customer requirement consistently" by "Strict Adherence to Systems and Procedures". They too can "Seek for Excellence in stead of Experience".

Sadananda
 

John Broomfield

Staff member
Super Moderator
#25
Sadananda,

Surely it is better for leaders to want to ensure their system is helping people to do good work instead of being told to require employees to follow good (and bad) procedures by you or anyone else?

This desire comes from them appreciating the value of their management system; both the documented and undocumented parts. From this appreciation can come widespread respect for the system including its obligations and benefits.

Instead of issuing a documented procedure and saying "you must follow this", enlightened leaders stay engaged by monitoring processes and reviewing the system to ensure the required improvements are made, and that the procedures remain accurate, without relying on auditors.

Thankfully, ISO 9001 removed the requirement for employees to conform to their procedures in 2000.

Surely, ten years later, the "we know best department" no longer says you must comply (a legal term)? QA (providing confidence that requirements will be fulfilled) and cost savings come from the leaders appreciating the value of their system beyond gaining and keeping a certificate.

John
 
P

PotentCompoundSafety

#26
In the EHS world, top management can show support by participating in walk-through inspections and wearing the required personal protective equipment, participating in safety committee meetings on a rotating basis, reviewing the executive summaries of all audit reports, and most importantly participating in the setting of EH&S goals and objectives for the company.

I'm sure these things would apply to the quality side as well.
 

John Broomfield

Staff member
Super Moderator
#27
In the EHS world, top management can show support by participating in walk-through inspections and wearing the required personal protective equipment, participating in safety committee meetings on a rotating basis, reviewing the executive summaries of all audit reports, and most importantly participating in the setting of EH&S goals and objectives for the company.

I'm sure these things would apply to the quality side as well.
Agreed, highly visible monitoring by leaders, managers and supervisors convinces operators that the requirements are important and that they will get all the help they need to meet the requirements more efficiently.
 
N

Neophyte

#28
...and how do you ensure they do?
It is my experience that it is neither "should" or "must", and that it is not something that needs ensuring. It is an inevitable result, almost by definition like George Washington's white horse being white (though I have no idea what color horse Washington may have actually rode).

Simply by the fact of being top management, top management will drive management of all other types in an organization. What direction that ends up going in, and whether or not that course is intentional or not may vary, but regardless top management will set the course; good or ill.
 
N

Neophyte

#30
Unfortunately, that is not so uncommon. I was a QM who reported to the plant/production manager for the first few years of my current position, and actually still now report to the location business manager as opposed to the divisional QM.

I think the arrangement happens a lot in industries that are not at the core of the quality movement (i.e. not automotive, pharmaceutical, areospace, ..., basically industries where when products fail it is not likely to cause the loss of human life and therefore massive law suits).
 
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