Quality evolution not control

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Rebecca Bradshaw - Quality evolution not control

One thing about quality systems is that they are never perfect and can always be improved.

This can be hard for the perfectionists out there, but for those of us preferring to start somewhere and see what happens, it can be quite liberating.

Your quality system and your business need some planning, but often we are afraid to let things evolve.  I recently provided mentoring advice and was asked: “did you always see yourself here?”  My answer was “definitely no.”

My work, like my life, has evolved and so can your organisation.

ISO 9001 2015 is a commonly used quality framework standard, that has a strong focus on planning. In most organisations I know, it’s the leadership team that performs some form of business planning, organising, leading, and controlling.

This planning and controlling, however, can create a top-down approach to business growth and development with the ‘grown-ups telling the children’ how things are done.  But what if we adopted an approach of quality evolution via collaboration and self-directed learning?

If we use the Internet as an example, it is not owned by one entity and has evolved and continues to evolve into a platform that provides people with what they need when they need it. There is not just one team of architects designing what we will need in five or ten years from now, rather it is the collective input that drives the change.

As John Naughton states in his article - "The evolution of the Internet: from military experiment to General Purpose Technology"

“...there was nothing inevitable about the evolutionary path that the Internet has taken.  
Like all technologies, it has been shaped not just by critical technical decisions made at various stages in its history, but also by accident and by economic, social, and cultural forces.”


Can you say the same about your organisation?  How do you grow, how do you adapt?

Ask yourself, is your quality system an instrument of change or a dinosaur keeping you all stuck in the past?

What if your quality systems could evolve to keep pace with your customers, rather than you having to guess what they need five years from now?

But where do we start?

If your quality system is to be allowed to evolve there are 3 factors to consider:

  • What is our perception of quality
  • How do we picture our future
  • What progress have we made and what further progress do we want to make.

You will need to ensure everybody understands how the work they do strengthens the organisation, supports customer satisfaction, solves the problems of your customers, provides value.

In short, how does the work they do drive quality?

You will need to measure how the work everyone is doing meets your customers’ needs in a way that is meaningful to the whole organisation. I’m not talking about KPI dashboards, those are primarily important to the leadership team.  I’m talking about the stories people tell, the great outcomes your customers have achieved. I’m talking about the things that keep people turning up to work every day.

This feedback and these stories are what drives the process of change and improvement. Planning can support the future direction of the organisation and is important to the bottom line, but letting the people develop the quality systems based on what has worked well has a good chance of creating a more agile system.

Quality Evolution requires some planning yes, but all top-down planning?  Maybe there’s a better way?


Rebecca