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Total Quality Management—Doing Right Things Right

by Geof Cox 1991

What do you want from people in your organisation? You want them to be doing the Right Things Right. (See Figure 1) When something goes wrong, our natural reaction is to assume that someone has made a mistake, in other words tried to do the Right Thing but got it Wrong. We check, and set up controls or procedures that will prevent it happening again.

This is the traditional view of quality improvement - inspecting for defects and setting controls to assure they do not happen again. What we don't often see is that the processes that people use in their jobs may have actually caused the mistakes. Thankfully, there are very few Luddites in business today, most people don't deliberately make mistakes, they try hard, they follow what has been set out for them, but something goes wrong. They are doing the Wrong Things Right. Traditional quality would increase the number of inspections and checks in the process, and take responsibility for quality further away from the individual.

How big is the problem? In investigations across a number of different organisations, about 80% of errors and quality issues were attributed to people doing the Wrong Things Right. In 8 out of the top 10 Fortune 500 Companies the best estimate is that they are doing 60% of Right Things Right. That means that for 2 days per week everyone is doing positive harm to the organisation.

**Traditional view of Quality Control

* 80% of quality related issues fall in this sector

Figure 1: Analysis of job holders outputs

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a process which looks at what people do, but also how they do it, and sets a standard of doing the Right Things, as well as doing them Right. The focus for the start of the processes of improvement of quality in TQM is the customer. At its most simple level, TQM can be defined as “meeting the customers requirements” (J.S.Oakland, Professor of TQM at Bradford University)

As Michael Simmons (Senior Partner, Malkin Janners) points out in the BIM Report, Beyond Quality, applying the TQM messages to the Professions is not easy. Most writings and examples of TQM come from the manufacturing industry. Here it is quite easy to measure what the customer wants, to measure quality of the product, and then measure customer satisfaction. When the output of the organisation is a service, such as with the Professions, measurement is more difficult, and based much more on perception and judgement. Often the customer (client) does not understand the detail of what she or he wants, and the professional has the job of discovering this, and then deciding how to satisfy that want. And at the point of eventual delivery of the service to the client, she or he will make a decision on the quality based on their own perception, and a concept of value for money. The further apart the professional and the client are in respect of understanding of each other, the more chance there is of the client receiving “poor” service in their eyes.

Not too bad, you might say, provided there are not too many dissatisfied clients. We try our best, we don't get too many complaints in our firm, and most clients are satisfied, you can't win them all. We don't have a problem. This is a dangerous attitude. All law firms are now finding it more difficult to retain clients and find new ones. It is more difficult to find and retain good staff. The cost of overheads is rising and profit margins are being squeezed. All of these trends can be addressed and reversed using the TQM process inside the firm.

• It costs about five times as much to find a new client than retain an existing one.

• Only about 1 person in 25 will formally complain about the service they receive, but they will all tell on average another 10 people of their dissatisfaction. So for every complaint you receive, 250 are in someway dissatisfied with you.

• There is a proven link between retention of staff and customer service. When employees make their customers happy, they make themselves happy, and are less likely to change jobs.

• Staff like to be involved in a responsive organisation, they don't like working in a bureaucracy that doesn't serve the client.

So, what are you doing about your customers? How do you know what they want, and what they think of your service? Michael Simmons again: “The essence of a satisfactory relationship today between the professional and the customer is in the careful management of that relationship throughout its term”. That calls for more than the technical skills taught in the Profession, and more than a `seat of the pants' feel to the subject. It requires the detailed analysis of the relationship with the customer - going out and finding out what they want, their expectations and current level of satisfaction. Surveys have found that customers are prepared to pay a high price for high quality, but that the quality of personal service is at least as important in the equation as technical quality.

It means finding out what your competitors are doing, and staying ahead of them. It means reviewing how you manage within the firm. The Law Society has prepared a “Best Practice” kit, and is launching its Code of Practice for law firms for BS 5750. The review of processes within the firm are a marvellous opportunity to improve and cut out inefficiencies that have built up over the years and do not contribute to customer service or profitability, and will guarantee BS 5750 accreditation. It comes back to defining what are the Right Things to do, and then doing them Right.

It means changing the culture of your firm to one that has a passion for serving the customer, for continuously improving its processes to help to serve the customer better, and to improve job satisfaction within the firm by involving everyone in the process. A large number of your clients are already pursuing this course of action in response to pressures and opportunities within their own sectors, they will expect their advisers and suppliers to provide the same level of service to them.

As we have already indicated the traditional view of quality has armies of inspectors checking for defects before releasing the product or service to the customer. TQM goes beyond this form of Quality Control (QC) by aiming to prevent errors before they occur. Quality Assurance (QA) focuses on installing a set of prescribed procedures to ensure conformity and compliance with a standard (like BS 5750). Unfortunately with QA, the standards are internal measures, and fixed, TQM looks to externally set standards such as client needs and expectations which constantly change.

In short TQM focuses on creating a quality orientated culture where everyone in the organisation accepts and operates a habitual process of continuous improvement (see Figure 2). Doing the Right Things Right, First Time, Every Time.

Figure 2. Total Quality Management and Traditional Quality compared

Finally, beware of thinking that you are operating at the best possible standards already. A number of years ago, IBM increased its standards for goods received from its suppliers to no more than 3 defective parts per thousand. The story goes that one Japanese supplier sent its next shipment to IBM with the following note:- “We do not understand your recent standard for supply of goods. We have included the three defective parts per thousand as requested, but have wrapped them separately.”

Someone, somewhere is operating at higher standards of total quality and customer service, and is increasing its profitability and market share as a result. The choice is not about whether to start your own TQM process or not, it is about how you can outdo your competitor's process.

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