Published by IndustryWeek
Larry Scarborough, Senior Project Director at Cogent Analytics and recently published in IndustryWeek, writes about building a culture around quality:
Part of operating is running into ‘quality’ issues—things do not go as planned, whether through operation, raw material, planning, or plain human error. The way we address these issues sets apart good organizations from great. The majority of small manufacturers do not have a problem-solving process and as a result, see the same problems arise.
Management is responsible for creating a culture that embraces identifying quality issues and problems that arise daily. Inherently, people are reluctant to call out issues, especially those that stem from human error. Management should be the one to send the message directly to all personnel that the expectation is always to bring up any issue—that you (management) understand and expect issues to happen—and no one will be admonished for helping the organization improve. As entrepreneur Ray Dalio outlined in his book Principles, this was ingrained in his organization—with Mr. Dalio also being part of a team that would publicly send out their own mistakes to all employees, to set the example of transparency.
Once a culture of constant improvement is established, systems and processes need to be implemented to eliminate the issues permanently. Some problems are fixed quickly, and some take additional resources. One common denominator that must be asked, regardless of the size of the issue, is “What do we do to prevent this from recurring?” Without asking, answering, and implementing changes, the same issue will continue to hurt the organization.
Read the full article from Larry Scarborough here on IndustryWeek.
At Cogent Analytics, we never stop looking for ways to improve your business and neither should you. So, check out some of our other posts for helpful business information:
Cogent Analytics, Inc is a business management consulting firm, with a primary focus to help small to medium size, privately held businesses achieve success and long term profitability. Cogent provides powerful solutions with integrity and transparency to privately-held businesses throughout the United States.
