It never occurs to those in the quality industry that all of our quality standards violate a primary rule of lean practice – we build them as push systems rather than pull systems! And then we expect them to be a seamless part of our organizational practice. Big wonder that they are not.
At present, the essence of every standard, from ISO 9001, to ISO14000 to ISO31000 to Baldrige, is that top leadership communicate the importance of the use of the standard. We also expect top leaders make sure subordinate management and employees are aware of their roles and responsibilities under the standard, and that our top leaders include performance under the standard in their annual evaluation. The basic truth is that we in the quality industry have developed professional best practices (or standards) in multiple areas of organizational performance which we have upwardly delegated to top managers! We expect top managers to help us nag the mid-level of the organization to jump to it! A classic push system.
Who of us believe that all our Senior Executives have to do is to run the multiple standards programs on which the organization must depend! Yet we continue to develop standards in new operational areas and push them upward to senior leaders. And even if senior mangers do undertake our jobs as practice area leads, every-time leadership changes the whole thing falls apart.
It does not have to be this way, and a set of standards being developed by the American Society for Quality Government Division is creating a new model for the future, in which the basic and fundamental role for standards will be re-aligned from the bottom-up. In this new scenario every operational office and every manager and supervisor in the organization will have the primary responsibility for initiating standards. At last, we will have pull system for quality, because the documented practices will be required to originate and be implemented at the lowest possible levels, and continuing reviews of these operations will score and make transparent the maturity of their quality practice! All managers and supervisors will be motivated to participate because they will need to demonstrate they have a ‘best practice operational plan’, and each of these plans CAN include the most important components of the organization-wide standards for quality management systems, or environmental safety, or risk.
The standard is the proposed Standard for the Quality of Government Operations and Services. This standards package is being developed for submission to the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) by year-end 2020. The standard document can be downloaded at http://my.asq.org/links/1591629693.html. And while the work is currently envisioned as applying primarily to government and the non-profit industry, the model is applicable everywhere.
The basis of the new standard is simple, and requires a focus on the “atomic particles” of quality and of management practice – the processes and systems that define the work flows that each manager and supervisor use. (And this includes the workflows of Executive Offices, and Program Offices as well.) The operational foundation of the new standard is a process maturity model, and a system maturity model – both of which have objective and measurable criteria through which the maturity of quality practices can be measured.
Each of the maturity models includes a maturity scoring matrix, so that uniform, objective scores that reflect the quality of management practices in each unit are possible, and these scores can be includes on a visible scorecard that defines the practices of the organization. For example, the process maturity model uses three criteria for its scoring, including a standardized process flow; a developed scale of leading and lagging measures; and the inclusion of engaged front-line workers in cycles of improvement. The system management standard uses three criteria similar to those, but also adds a fourth scored criteria for risk management.
The standard begins with a presumption that supervisors and managers at the front line will develop best practice models of their value creating processes and systems. The development and use of these best practice models will be a continuing responsibility and a proof that they are fulfilling their role as leaders.
Once it is understood that every leader will be held accountable for documenting best practice operational models, then higher level managers will also be held accountable for aligning and improving the systems that are presented. In this way leaders at every level of an organization will be challenged to develop a best practice operations approach. The process and system models presented in this standard have been structured to be evaluated through objective measurements, developed regularly by internal auditors or reviewers. In this way the models provide for scoring maturity levels and the capability of individual units, and of the organization as a whole.
These maturity models are predictive in nature since they illustrate the effectiveness of an organization’s foundational systems and processes and the resulting level of risk. This standard documents a methodology for structuring and making visible process and system maturity scoring to provide a benchmark for the effectiveness, capability and risk of any program or office. It also offers a challenge for future improvement in a manner that can be objectively analyzed.
The structured system management is a new body of knowledge for quality, (https://insights.cermacademy.com/283-the-real-foundations-of-quality-4-0-structured-systems-management-richard-mallory/) that is based on the chunking of system actions into ‘principal activity groups,’ and the development of a best practice operational plan using cause and effect analysis. Structured system management is also described in the book, Lean System Management for Leaders, published by Taylor and Francis, CRC publishing.
These quality standards present a “new normal” that envisions the broad-scale use of annual quality audits to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of government. If used in this way the measured quality maturity models will reinvent any organization that requires their use and will enable a new platform for each of its required practice standards. The principal catalyst for this change will be the adoption of auditable quality standards within every organizational entity—based on its efficiency, effectiveness, and delivered value.
BIO:
Richard E. Mallory, MM, PMP, is a past Chair of the ASQ Government Division and is a Principal Consultant with Mallory Management in Sacramento, CA. He is author of three books on quality including “Quality Standards for Highly Effective Government,” Taylor and Francis Publishing, and Leadership Strategy: Creating Excellent Organizations, Trafford Publishing. He is a seven-time examiner for the US and California Baldrige Quality Awards. He can be contacted at rich_mallory@yahoo.com
[1] A term adopted by the ASQ Government Division with this definition: “The tools and knowledge associated with quality management with its origins in the Toyota Production System of the 1970’s, and embracing a broad body of professional knowledge focused on doing work right the first time. Used as the basis of the U.S. Baldrige Performance Excellence Program and the Japanese Deming Award. Embodied in the Body of Knowledge maintained by the American Society for Quality.”
[2] Deming, W.E. 1993. The New Economics. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for Advanced Engineering, pg. 94-118.
[3] Deming, W.E. 1988. Out of the Crisis.
[4] Senge, P.M. 1990. The Fifth Discipline. Doubleday. New York.
[5] Baldrige Excellence Framework, Baldrige Performance Excellence Program, National Institute of Standards and Technology. 2017-2018. Page 31.