Why Total Quality Management Destroys Service

Assessing the state of your organization

Total quality management attempts to standardise in order to reduce internal costs. But when you standardise service you neglect your customers, destroying service.

"Too many quality efforts begin as administrative, analytical, mechanistic, control-oriented, dehumanized, standards-based management attempts to "tighten-up" the organisation rather than loosen it up and empower the people to make their own individual quality commitments. This is why the doctrinaire, mechanistic TQM systems are ultimately doomed to failure."
Karl Albrecht, The Northbound Train: Finding the Purpose, Setting the Direction, Shaping the Destiny of your Organization

The sole purpose of a TQM approach is a service organisation is to assess the state of your offering. But you need to bear in mind that business process, knowledge, quality and risk management are all part of the deal. You can't improve one without addressing another. And addressing any of them with a mechanistic mindset will only give you more of the same...

The only purpose of assessing the state of your organisation is to find out whether the Measures you use relate to your organisation's Purpose.

Assessing is the moment of truth of any change programme, the A in U-A-I-P, the strategic planning model that turns command-and-control on its head and the foundation of your quality assurance process...

• Understand your Purpose
• Assess your Measure
• Improve your Method
• Plan your Future

The articles you can find here will help to reinforce the simplicity of this approach and why it makes change safe. Read articles on...

• Business Process Management
• Knowledge Management
• Quality Management
• Risk Management

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• Business Process Management
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