REDEFINING TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT--TQM

Redefining Total Quality Management (TQM)

TO redefine means to expound, to restate the meaning of. But how can we redefine a thing or concept, like total quality management, when such term can’t be captured in one or two meaning?

Total quality management is difficult to neither summarize in one sentence nor define in one paragraph as its single definition. Quality gurus have tried defining it, but many agreed that it is basically an “alternative management philosophy.” Some say TQM is eclectic, but it is not. For a proper perspective, I present several definitions of total quality management (TQM):
• “A management process and set of disciplines that is coordinated to ensure that the organization consistently meets and exceeds customer requirements.” (Capezio and Morehouse, 1995).
• “A combination of methods, theories, techniques, and quality guru strategies for achieving exceptional quality.” (Richardson, 1997).
• “Total quality management is not a fad of time, but rather a correction of the previous failures in management combined to produce a better management style when used appropriately.” (Anschutz, 1995).
• Progress in the search for excellence depends largely on the leadership. At work, total quality management (TQM) is best promoted when a leader is able to get everyone to be involved in activities designed to increase customer satisfaction. TQM requires continual changes that contribute to quality improvement and the leader is responsible for finding the best avenue to achieve this. (Gatchalian, 2000).
• For those who view TQM as a philosophy, a good definition may be offered as follows: it is “a management philosophy that builds a customer-driven organization dedicated to total customer satisfaction through continuous improvement in the effectiveness and efficiency of the organization and its processes” (Corrigan, 1995).

Given the many definitions, uses of the various tools available or integral to total quality management, still TQM cannot be exactly defined. It is so broad too dynamic to be captured, yet many have failed to use it properly leaving these companies and quality practitioners to conclude total quality management is ineffective as a management framework. Those who expounded TQM became successful in improving the company’s productivity, competitiveness and quality. Others even went further to redefine TQM giving it a different name, like business excellence. These are the organizations or companies that integrated other management tools, quality concepts, methodologies and technologies in their management framework, e.g. 5S, six sigma, benchmarking, workplace cooperation, enterprise resource planning, ISO standards, CSR, quality circles, among others. The common denominator of these organizations is that they have learned to make total quality management as a way of life, a dynamic corporate culture. They have discovered that TQM is neither a panacea nor an overnight program, and in quality government TQM is not an oxymoron. TQM is not a management fad, a marketing cosmetic, but rather, total quality management is a management philosophy, an art, a way of living and working and a vibrant corporate culture.

To redefine TQM, we need to see it from a different perspective, an angle which transcends the traditional management science that gives emphasis on control, more profits, leaving the other Ms of management unbalanced -- machines, methods, money, manpower -- and even unrelated with customers’ needs, human capital, environment, government and society. Redefining TQM is not only all about systems and processes. It (also) calls for “habits of the heart”, deeply ingrained ways of seeing, being and responding to life that involve our minds, our emotions, our self-­‐images, our concepts of meaning and purpose in life. I believe that these eight taken together are critical to sustaining an authentic TQM at the same time redefining it. It has this ability to serve as a genuinely integral platform on which to build our future:
1) An understanding that we are all in this together. Executives, economists, engineers, ethicists, philosophers of management science, and even religious and secular leaders who believe in quality, value and goodness have all given voice to this theme. Despite our illusions of individualism and superiority, we humans are a profoundly interconnected species—entwined with one another and with all forms of life, as the global economic and ecological crises reveal in vivid and frightening detail. We must embrace the simple fact that we are dependent on and accountable to one another, and that includes the stranger, the “alien other.” At the same time, we must save this notion of interdependence from the idealistic excesses that make it an impossible dream. Exhorting people to hold a continual awareness of global or national interconnectedness is a counsel of perfection, achievable (if at all) only by the rare saint that can only result in self-delusion or defeat. Which leads to a second key habit of the heart….
2) An “appreciation of a (corporate) culture based on quality, value and goodness.” It is true that we are all in this together. Contained within the human heart is an inextinguishable drive to make greater sense of our world while also cultivating the freedom, passion and capacities to transform it. This is why many of us are drawn to lead integral lives, particularly those committed to quality, goodness and value. And I’m sure you have noticed that while living integrally starts as something you know, it proceeds to something you do, and ends as something you embody. It is embodiment, this final step, that we all seek – the “on-board capacities” to grow anywhere we want to; to live completely, deeply in touch with our unique gifts and vision. Not merely as something we know, but also as something we are. The practice of total quality management, just like teaching, is a calling, a vocation that requires constant renewal of mind, heart, and spirit. Quality practitioners and quality executives come to the profession inspired by a passion to help others learn. They are drawn to TQM by an ethic of service and a mission to make a difference in their organization and business world by contributing to succeeding generations of quality practitioners and quality managers. Quality executives care, and keep finding ways to connect with peers, staff and workforce. They do not check their hearts at the door.
3) Total Quality Management is transformational on all levels--personal, organizational or even global. It works across all levels of consciousness and lines of human development to achieve real and sustainable capacity integration in any line of development: spiritual, emotional, leadership, self or any others. (In fact, it impacts all of them.)
4) TQM is relevant as it works over the entire range of actual daily experience by always starting with what’s going on in your life right now in any topic, challenge or opportunity.
5) TQM is integral and dynamic because it employs a sophisticated understanding of subject-object differentiation to achieve organizational growth in vertical stages adding to productivity, quality and competitiveness. When another person speaks you hear both less and more than they mean. Less because none of us can express the full extent of our understanding, and more because what another says is constantly mixing and interacting with your own knowledge and puzzlements. This is how TQM works, its dynamism. That is precisely why one of its principles is continuous learning and improvement. Management may mistakenly believe that improvement is a “natural” process or that it can be accomplished by pressure or incentives alone. One must reexamine each aspect of product and process, casting aside the comfortable assumption that everyone knows what they are doing. This attitude creates laxity, lethargy and even egoistic work behavior. Today, this approach to information flows and business processes is sometimes called “reengineering” or “business-process transformation.” Whatever it is called, the underlying principle is that improvements come from reexamining the details of how work is done, not just from cost controls or incentives.
6) TQM is integrative going beyond just knowledge or “tastes” of experience that soon fade, this approach actually integrates new insight and skills into embodied capacities for deep living (or anything else you’re seeking). The success of TQM highly correlates with how important your customer is to the organization. The same issues that arise in improving work processes also arise in the improvement of products, except that observing buyers is more difficult than examining one’s own systems. Companies that excel at product development and improvement carefully study the attitudes, decisions, and feelings of their customers. They develop a special empathy for customers and anticipate problems before they occur. This is the dynamics of total quality management.
7) TQM is personal because it works with your 100% unique perspective on the world and accounts for your unique way of doing, living and being in relation to where you are right now. It is how you relate with yourself, your beliefs, your peers, your boss, co-workers and how you are as a human being. Transformation is always an internal change just like TQM, before it spreads throughout the organization, it must start with you. TQM needs top management support and quality leaders to spread, advocate and teach quality principles and processes.
8) TQM is applied common-sense management as it uses fun and engaging quality practices that will help you sustain your transformation. It helps you unlock potential with real-life practices in the areas you care about, and in fact takes integral transformative management practice to a whole new level of precision and growth. One very important TQM common-sense is love of customer. The reason companies may fail to engage in a process of improvement occurs when isolating mechanisms surrounding important methods are weak. Companies in such situations sensibly hope to catch a free ride on the improvements of others. To benefit from investments in improvement, the improvements must either be protected or embedded in a business that is sufficiently special that its methods are of little use to rivals. Continuously learning and improvement, an essential TQM principle, creates productivity, quality and competitiveness. Learning how to improve processes and continuously studying customers’ needs are applied common-sense management, supported with the use of various quality concepts and methodologies like: six sigma, benchmarking, quality circles, statistical quality control, enterprise resource planning, material requirements planning, value analysis/value engineering, hoshin-kanri, ISO standards, Malcolm Baldrige national quality awards system, customer relationship management, among others.

Redefining total quality management is fundamental to achieving performance excellence. It is how you make use of TQM that matters and using it requires redefining TQM as the need arises. Redefining TQM refers to an integrated approach to organizational performance management that results in (a) delivery of ever-improving value to customers and stakeholders, contributing to organizational sustainability; (b) improvement of overall organizational effectiveness and capabilities; and lastly, (c) continuous organizational and personal learning. When you redefine TQM, integral transformation management is its foundation. Meaning, it refers to the harmonization of plans, processes, information, resource decisions, actions, results, and analyses to support key organization-wide goals as called for in the organization’s mission-vision-core values (sometimes called Quality Policy).
Redefining TQM is effective integration. Effective integration goes beyond alignment and is achieved when the individual components of a management system operate as a fully inter-connected unit or system within a given environment.

This is an approach that truly lives up to the higher standard set by redefining total quality management, an integral transformative management philosophy in itself.

-OM- (Buds Molina Fernando)
Rafael Pablo M. Fernando is currently the Officer-in-Charge of the Total Quality Management group of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA). He is also connected with Integral Transformation Group, Inc., a transformative management group giving organizations and its people alternative forms of managing and living life to the fullest. Formed 1992, ITG-TheGroup extends management services, education & training, and advocacy activities in the areas of: TQM-ISO implementation, organic agriculture, cooperatives, sustainable development, good governance, strategic planning, institutional development, among others. (April 5, 2012).