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Quality improvement process should be a vehicle for positive and constructive movement within an organisation. We must, however, be aware of the destructive potential of the process. Failure to observe the fundamental principles associated with the ‘four Ps’ of quality improvement may so severely damage motivation that the organisation is unable to recover fully. Those four Ps are :
• People. It will quickly become apparent that some individuals are not ideally suited to the participatory process. Lack of enthusiasm will be apparent from a generally negative approach and a tendency to have pre-arranged meeting which coincide with the meetings of TQM teams! Where these individuals are charged with the responsibility for driving group success then progress will be slow or negligible. Quality improvement teams may have to be abandoned largely for associated reasons before they are allowed to grind to a halt.
• Process. The rhetoric and inflexibility of a strict Deming approach will often have a demotivating effect on group activity. It is essential to approach problem-solving practically and to regard the formal process as a system designed to prevent participants from jumping to conclusions. As such it will provide a means to facilitate the generation of alternatives while ensuring that important discussion stages are not omitted.
• Problem. Experience suggests that the least successful groups are those approaching problems that are deemed to be too large to provide meaningful solutions within a finite time period. Problems need to be approached in bite-sized chunks, with teams tackling solvable problems with a direct economic impact, allowing for immediate feedback together with a recognition of the contribution made by individual participants. For example, while ‘communications’ and ‘morale’ are frequently cited as key problem areas, they are too broad to provide successful quality improvement targets. Smaller aspects of these issues must be identified.
• Preparation. A training in the workings of Deming-like processes is an inadequate preparation for the efficient implementation of a quality improvement process. Additional courses on creative thinking and statistical processes are needed in order to give participants a greater appreciation of the diversity of the process. This training must quickly be extended beyond the immediate accounting circle to include employees at supervisory levels and below who are involved at the data input stage.
