Road to World-Class Quality

Quality Leadership Compass

As explained in Quality Capsule # 021, there are four components of a Quality Leadership Compass (QLC) are:

• Customer focus
• Process improvement paradigm
• Abundance mentality
• Creative thinking.

While the QLC emphasizes four leadership traits, these are by no means the only four.

Nevertheless, the QLC can substantially enable organizations to navigate the wilderness and lead them to their corporate vision: World-Class Quality.

Five Geographical Terrains

The road to world-class quality has five geographical terrains:

• Resolve to deliver world-class quality
• Plan to deliver world-class quality
• Commence the journey to attaining world-class quality
• Spread the pilot experience for attaining world-class quality
• Integrate all quality practices for delivering world-class quality.

Within each terrain, by using the QLC, specific paths can be identified and followed to reach the corporate vision.

Vision

The vision is the North Star. It must be collectively owned by all the top leaders in the organization.

Based on my experience with clients in India and neighbouring Asian countries, I estimate the elapsed time for the journey to world-class quality to be 1000 days.

Several of these organizations have subsequently embraced the International Quality Maturity Model (IQMM), and progressed to win the IMC Ramkrishna Bajaj National Quality Award, or the CII Exim Bank Award for Business Excellence.

Additional Reference
World-Class Quality: An Executive Handbook