Quality
Without Tears
A
book by Philip B. Crosby. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984, 205
pages.
Reviewed
by Grady McAllister
Reviewer's
note: Philip B. Crosby died on August 18, 2001, at the
age of 75. I credit Crosby with first sparking my interest
in business management literature. The quote on the right
is from the first book I ever read on the subject.
Long before "quality" became
a household buzzword, Philip B. Crosby was the in-house quality
guru at ITT. In The Art of Getting Your Own Sweet Way(1972),
he wrote:
People are conditioned
to believe that error is inevitable . . . However, we do
not accept the same standard when it comes to our personal
life. If we did, we would resign ourselves to being shortchanged
now and then when we cash our paychecks. We would expect
hospital nurses to drop a certain percentage of all newborn
babies. We would expect to go home to the wrong house periodically.
As individuals we do not tolerate these things. Thus we
have a double standard, one for ourselves, one for the company.
The standard organizations
needed was "Zero Defects":
The Zero Defects concept
is based on the fact that mistakes are caused by two things:
lack of knowledge and lack of attention . . . Zero Defects
is not a motivation method, it is a performance standard.
And it is not just for production people; it is for everyone.
Though many wanted to join
the quality bandwagon, Zero Defects was not always understood:
I found people thinking
that Zero Defects was a worker motivation program and blaming
all the problems on the workers . . . Management is the
bad guy . . . We are dealing with a new management philosophy,
not a propaganda program.
In Quality Without Tears,
Crosby adds new layers to his original philosophy.
He offers these fourteen steps
for quality improvement in teams:
1. Management commitment.
This requires a specific management policy on quality. Quality
must be the first item on the agenda at every regular status
meeting. The manager must carry a speech on quality in his
head and deliver it at every opportunity.
Team Actions:
2. The quality improvement
team. "The purpose of the team is to guide the process and
help it along. It is not to clear each action beforehand,
to be the all-wise oracle, or to hold things back."
3. Measurement. Many people
see measurement as 'the ultimate hassle," in organizations
based on hassle. But the real hassle begins when no one knows
how well you are really doing.
4. Cost of quality. To determine
the cost of quality, be sure you are measuring the same thing
all the time, throughout the company. The tendency is for
each area to try to limit its cost.
5. Quality awareness. Awareness
must begin at the management level: "When conformance to requirements
becomes part of the lexicon of the company, then it begins
to take effect."
6. Corrective action. The
common problem with 'corrective action" is that people don't
understand what the term means.
Suppose, says Crosby, that
you suddenly found a grizzly bear in your back yard: "The
answer would not be to set up an armed camp to protect yourself
from the bear. This is the sort of action that takes place
when parts of an organization are given a shoot-to-kill license.
All that results is a lot of yard that can't be used and several
dead bears."
Corrective actions have to
begin by identifying the source of the bears.
Team Executions:
7. Zero Defects planning.
People get nervous when they hear there is going to be a Zero
Defects Day. They expect to 'have a band, straw hats, and
balloons and do all kinds of funny things." Zero Defects is
a major step forward and is not something to announce suddenly.
The process should begin a year and a half ahead of time.
It should be serious, dignified, and without hype.
8. Employee education. Chapter
10 describes the education process and the curriculum of Crosby's
Quality College.
9. Zero Defects Day. The day
is not the time to get the employees to stand up and promise
to improve; it is the time to ask the management to stand
up for all to see:
Many people rarely have
exciting days at work . . . A well-planned, dignified,
Zero Defects Day on which management understands what it
is talking about is a delight that will be remembered forever.
10. Goal-setting. Measurement
leads directly to goal setting. "The ultimate goal, of course,
is Zero Defects" but intermediate goals are necessary to move
you in that direction. Ideally, the group chooses the goals
and follows its progress on a chart.
11. Error-cause removal. People
simply state what problems they are having. It is not a suggestion
system in which the employee has to give the answer to the
problem:
The team must ask itself,
What are we going to do when we receive an error cause? How
are we going to tell the person we received it? How are we
going to get it analyzed and acted upon? How are we going
to tell the person we did something about it?
12. Recognition. Recognize
people who can serve as "beacons." These are the people who
shine so brightly that they help keep everyone heading in
the right direction:
Many managers feel, somewhat
cynically, that people are being paid to do their jobs and
that's that. This attitude reflects an insensitivity to
people that is a trademark of many hockey-style managers.
13. Quality councils. Quality
professionals get together to learn from each other and to
support the improvement process.
14. Do it all over again .
After two years or less, a new quality team takes over with
perhaps one continuing member. In all likelihood, the new
team "takes off on many new tacks, develops many new ways
of doing things, and causes even more improvement than happened
the first time." Crosby concludes:
This is all the result
of learning, and of watching and participating. As quality
improvement becomes more and more an enduring way of life,
as it becomes the culture of the company, the process gains
speed and permanence.
To drive his philosophy home,
Crosby cites an unusual case study:
In "A Quality Carol," Emory
Spellman falls asleep on a bus. A spirit appears and takes
him to see his deceased partner. The partner is repairing
thousands of defective items that their company has made.
This is punishment ...
... For being the cause
of the hassle other people had to live with. For not preventing
these things by being interested in quality.
The apparition warns:
All these years, you
have treated quality like something you could take in or
take out. Well, unless you change your ways, you are going
to wind up right next to me, forever and ever, twenty-four
hours a day. No time off, no visitors, no meetings ----
just all the problems you ever caused.
Predictably, three more visitors
appear.
Quality Past is a former college
professor who wants to retract something he had taught Emory.
The misinformed lesson was to cut corners on quality.
Quality Present appears as
a woman who tries to sell him on the quality vaccine. Failing
in that, she brings Emory's customers to him through a television
screen. One after another comes into view with a litany of
complaints about the company's products and services.
When Quality Future enters,
Emory finally sees the light. The final and most portentous
visitor is a "severe looking person carrying a briefcase and
dressed in a black three-piece suit." He has just bought the
company from a bankruptcy court.
Emory returns later in the
book and applies Crosby's methods to avert that fate.
Also available: Managing
the Quality Revolution. (Chicago: Nightingale-Conant,
1993. Four audio cassettes.) Crosby reads from Quality without
Tears and three of his other books.
The
Vasthead is the professional web site of
Grady McAllister of Houston, Texas.
http://vasthead.com
|
