During the 13 years we’ve been developing and implementing software for quality assessment, I noticed an obvious evolution in the way people are working on achieving a quality standard.

Mid to late nineties a considerable number of companies were only trying to get a quality standard for the sole purpose of business growth. Especially subcontractors were required to obtain one or more to be able to provide services particularly to bigger companies. They wanted the sign up on the wall in the lobby and the reference on their website and correspondence.

Meanwhile, other companies were doing great efforts on getting accredited in order to really improve their business and customer experience. You could easily distinguish them by the vigorous way they were working towards their goals and how to perfectly apply the advantages of working on quality.

It would probably be bold to claim that the ratio was about 50/50. Still, that was my impression.

Needless to mention that the second kind was destined to grow more than the first kind.

Fortunately, things have changed. Today almost every company achieving a quality standard really appreciates the opportunity of staying up with the everyday more and more competitive market. They are truly looking at the advantages of constantly working on quality.

The demands of the ISO9001:2000 standard also are more focused on real quality improvements.

Yesterday, I attended an introduction seminar about the “Goed Gedaan” (transl. “Well Done”) project of the VCK (Flemish Centre for Quality Assessment) in Antwerp (Belgium). It’s a project lasting 18 months that helps the participants to tackle “human errors” that occur in their organization, especially during repetitive tasks. The whole project is driven by Mr. John Evans (UK) who is a real expert in this field. He has more than 20 years of experience and he gave advice to big companies like Merck, Lloyds TSB, GlaxoSmithKline, Coca Cola and Rolls Royce.

Those of you who are familiar with TQM and Six Sigma will agree that “human error” is one of the most frequent root causes of non-conformities. Corrective actions such as additional training, more testing and inspection only take away the side effects and/or block defective products. The knowledge to tackle the real cause of this “human error” is not well spread and thus not used to take real action to solve this problem.

Interested? Take a look at the website of the VCK or at the website of John Evans.

On Xing I had an interesting discussion this weekend with Dr. Bruno Wüst about “Good is just not good enough”. He quoted Caesar: “Better in Rome the second than in any other town the first”. Dr. Wüst doesn’t see it as a contradiction to what I am claiming, but rather as an addition. (note: there is no written source for this quote, the closest match that I have found is the one of William Shakespeare’s “Caesar”: “I would rather be first in a little Iberian village than second in Rome.”)

I personally think that if Caesar had to choose between the one or the other, he would opt for being number two in Rome (rather than being the first amongst barbarians), but his final goal has always been to become and stay the number one in Rome.

Being number two can only be a (temporary) milestone or result in your road to becoming number one. Napoleon Hill wrote in his “Think, Grow Rich” that setting your goal and visualizing it (as if you are already there) will get you there in the end.

So if you ask my opinion: if I had to make a choice between the one or the other I would walk in the footsteps of Caesar and go for being number 2 in a big market, but… I believe that nobody should make a choice, since you master your own fate. So I go for being number one in the big market.

Seth Godin wrote a very interesting article about “teaching your customers a lesson”. Click here to read it.

It’s a real life story about a package that was returned by the post office for being less than 1% short on postage!!
I totally agree that we overreact too slightly on bad behavior because we worry (you know: “If we don’t slam this door shut, then everyone will do it…”). This is such a nice example of a stupid dogma: people normally don’t take advantage of that “open” door! And if they do, then there is still plenty of time to react to their so called “bad behavior”.

So quality is also: “Be kind and tolerant to your customers if they cross a line”. Don’t be the bully that yells at them to show them that they have done something wrong (if you want to keep your customers of course).

We are living in “fast” times with fast food, fast media… Exciting times, I agree, but o so dangerous to walk into the trap of “fast communication”.
Don’t misunderstand me, I’m also a big fan and even a big user of this handy concept called “e-mail”, but you have to know when to use it and almost more important when not!

The excuse that you hear most from people that are defending e-mail as the one and only way of communicating is that it’s a much faster way to get things done. Well… of course it’s not. It just might give you the (wrong) impression that you save some time: you think of something, you create a new mail and you push the “send” button. But… who says that the addressee will open it as fast as you wrote it, if he/she ever receives it. Do not forget that the internet is packed with spam filters and spam rules to block what must be blocked… and sometimes even block what shouldn’t have been blocked.However, the three biggest disadvantages that make “e-mail” a trap is that it lacks intonation & nuance, it’s written for eternity and it’s unidirectional instead of interactive.

1. The lack of intonation & nuance: I can give you plenty of examples of the disadvantages of the lack of interaction and nuance, and I’m pretty sure that you have some cases you can think of too. The problem with e-mail is that a “No” is a very hard “No”, and of course the use of emoticons can help you to add some nuance and humor into your mails but it’s still not the same as a real conversation.
2. It’s written for eternity: The problem with a written word is that it is everlasting. The receiver can read it and read it all over again and again and… Every time he or she rereads the message it will become more and more sharp, edgy and maybe even offensive. You will never be able to reconsider your words and it will be stored in their e-mail archives until it pops up again to be used (mostly against you).
3. It’s unidirectional instead of interactive: This is one of the reasons why e-mails are such a slow way of communicating. You send your opinion, your customer sends back his remarks, you react on his reaction, your customer reacts on your reaction again… STOP! Grab a phone and make that phone call ASAP before it even gets worse.

My advice is: only use e-mail for short messages, internal memos, draft proposals and ideas to colleagues or as a written confirmation/summary of your previous “real life” conversation.

Never use e-mail as the only communication channel towards external people (and certainly never towards customers!). To solve a customer complaint? No! To close a deal? No! To ask for a favor? No!

I hope you agree with me. If not I would be happy to hear your opinion.