Cultivating a quality-centric culture is like planting seeds of success throughout your organization. Just as a single seed can blossom into a flourishing garden, inspiring a commitment to quality has the power to foster continuing success. So, what are the most effective ways to plant these seeds of success? How do we water the seeds properly to get the lasting results all business owners want? In this article we will explore some techniques on how to accomplish this.
Leading by Example
The most common technique to cultivate a quality-centric culture is leading by example. For this technique to be effective, mindful leadership must set the tone for excellence and inspire teams to follow suit. Universal engagement throughout all levels of your company fosters ownership, accountability, and innovation beyond product delivery.
Look internally for champions and train those champions as an investment. This in turn empowers employees to consistently deliver high-quality results, reinforced by a shift toward everyone’s responsibility in upholding quality. View mistakes as learning opportunities that fuel innovation within guidelines. Celebrate successes and continue to drive a customer-centric perspective. When your team can sustain quality through growth, it reinforces the long-term impact and loyalty bred by a quality-focused culture.
Cross-functional quality culture enables quality practices to span across functions creating a holistic dedication to excellence. Fortify this commitment through data-driven decisions that target developments and promote transparency, accountability, and ongoing learning. Ideally, empowered problem solvers will lead the charge in proactively safeguarding excellence. Instilling quality-centric culture is about the intentionality behind empowering your team and aligning values with both your employees and customers.
Supplier Partnerships
The next way to cultivate a quality-centric culture is through supplier partnerships. Let’s imagine your company is called “Gadget Genius.” It’s a well-established company known for its innovative tech gadgets that have captivated the market. However, the company has been facing a persistent quality conundrum lately and needs a solution. Some of its products have been falling short of customer expectations due to inconsistencies in the components supplied by different vendors. After reading a witty article online, you, the owner, decide to embrace the strategy of supplier partnerships.
You contact the suppliers and form the “League of Quality.” Together, you embark on a mission to ensure that every nut, bolt, and chip entering the Gadget Genius production line meets the highest quality standards. By uniting as a leadership team and aligning partners with their quality goals, Gadget Genius transforms its supply chain into a unified quality ecosystem.
The most important part is to talk to your suppliers. Be open, honest, and clear about your expectations of quality. You can bargain with suppliers by ordering in bulk or calling upon your long history together to make deals happen. Sometimes calling in a third-party consultant to strengthen your supply chain partnerships is the best move. Talk more with your supplier’s leadership team and find out how they are truly doing to form a genuine partnership with them. Move away from a transactional partnership and move into a genuine partnership.
Tracking Metrics that Matter
Tracking metrics that matter is critical to cultivate a quality-centric culture. The critical component of this is “that matter.” Stop wasting your time if you’re tracking something that doesn’t link to your bottom line. Many small businesses barely track input/output metrics, and fewer companies track key performance indicators (KPIs) that link to their bottom line. Many companies also forget that rework, return rate, defect rate, and UX metrics also link to your bottom line.
For example, Gadget Genius saw the importance of reducing its defect rate. They reduced it from 5% to 2%. With an annual production of 100,000 gadgets, this reduction meant avoiding 3,000 potential defects, translating into $150,000 in savings from reduced rework costs and warranty claims. Doing so bolstered the company’s net profit by 12%. The question is, how do we reduce the defect rate? This is where we land back at supplier relationships!
Feedback Loops for a Problem-Solving Culture
Embracing feedback loops and instilling a problem-solving culture in your business is the final technique to create a quality-centric culture. Quality is a mindset, and it doesn’t only apply to what your businesses sells, but to your employees, too. Ideas should be cascaded from ground-floor workers to leadership. In leadership, you need all the information about what is happening to make the best decision at the right time. Your employees know what is happening in real time.
There are many ways to create feedback loops, but the goal is a communication channel for employees to voice concerns, share insights, and suggest improvements. Leadership must create constructive time to find champions of change and innovation with rewards and incentives. Where do you get the incentive money? It can come from the return on investment from the opportunities or problem costs found by the employees.
For example, let’s say that an employee finds that if the assembly lines shift down vertically by 10 degrees, gravity will slide the boxes down the shoot 10% faster than before. Her line is the only line doing this, and her line has consistently kept up with the pace and has outperformed its competing lines by 10%, as she predicted it would. You verify it’s a safe option to make the adjustments, and now you have two more lines running at an additional 10% each. This translates into 100,000 more widgets a quarter, which is 400,000 more widgets annually, ultimately leading to $1.4 million in net profit. The math is hypothetical, but you would certainly have a few dollars to spare to compensate the employee for such a suggestion.
This hypothetical revenue increase comes from intentionally creating an environment of feedback. If you praise the employee, you create a positive example and encourage behavior, leading others to follow suit. Each idea should be made known and heard and never shot down abrasively. You can learn tips to do this effectively in many different forums. The point is to be intentional and well-planned in your approach to feedback loops.
Conclusion
To conclude, cultivating a quality-centric culture is crucial to keeping your customers happy and loyal and ensuring your employees are seen and heard. A happy employee taking ownership and pride in their work is worth its weight in gold. Lead by example, foster genuine supplier partnerships, track metrics that matter, and implement feedback loops to cultivate a quality-centric culture in your business.
