Leaders need to encourage an organisation-wide commitment to quality and positive examples to people in the organisation

President Uhuru Kenyatta and NASA leader Raila Odinga

Quality is king. We can never overemphasize the role that quality plays in our lives. From the service that you receive from a company to the pen that one uses, it requires a quality management system to ensure the end product or service meets set standards.

As a trainer in Quality Management Systems, I am often asked what exactly quality is. In fact, when I bounce back the question to the trainees, many define quality based on attributes such as goodness, beauty, look or feel. This is however imprecise as individual perceptions of the same attributes differ. This is further confirmed by the saying “beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder”.

It therefore requires an objective measure of quality. For this reason, the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) has come up with a universal definition of quality, as “the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics of an entity fulfils requirements”.

In recognition of the centrality of quality, each year, the second Thursday of November is set to increase awareness on its value and in acknowledgement of the critical role. The theme for World Quality Day (WQD) this year is “Celebrating everyday Leaders”. This is a timely reminder that we have an opportunity to be advocates of quality, be it in championing for quality products and services or promoting a processes approach. 

Leadership value

But who are the quality champions in any organisation? Leadership is at the core of implementing an effective quality management system. In fact it is intentional that leadership is one of the seven principles of ISO 9001: 2015 Quality Management Systems because it provides commitment and guidance for the systematic and continual improvement of an organisation’s overall performance.

Leaders have a responsibility to set the strategic direction of any organisation. It is also their role to communicate the mission, vision, strategy, policies and processes, besides shaping the culture of the organisations by living what they believe is important. The values embedded in the culture and reinforced by the behavior of the leadership has an effect and not the idealistic well-crafted values listed in strategic plans. The behavior of the leadership influences the quality culture, hence the need to create and sustain shared values, fairness and ethical models for behaviour at all levels of the organisation.

The other six principles of Quality Management Systems, namely Customer Focus, Engagement of people, Process Approach, Improvement, Evidence based decision making and Relationship management are important but leadership is at the centre of them all. So why is leadership key if organisations in Kenya are to produce quality products and services?

Findings

Indeed, leaders set the tone for how employees treat their customers. A leader who advocates for interests of the customer and stakeholders acts as the conscience of the organisation and will quickly intervene to delight them. Another reason why leadership is key in driving the quality agenda, is that engaged employees are more likely to be enthusiastic and keen to exceed customer expectation. Empowered employees also take initiatives without fear and when their contribution is recognised, they focus more on quality. In fact, leaders who promote a process approach and assign clear roles and responsibilities, evaluating performance at intervals promote quality products and services.

A recent survey by National Quality Institute (NQI), found that most decisions on adopting international standards are influenced by decision makers in an organisation. The trend is worrying because to date, only 172 organisations are certified by the Kenya Bureau of Standards to the Quality Management System (QMS) standards despite the fact that quality affects us all, every day and without quality control, the world would be unpredictable and an unsafe place to live in.

For a quality culture to be entrenched, leaders should encourage an organisation-wide commitment to quality and are positive examples to people in the organisation. Leaders also need to provide the required resources. These can only be achieved in an environment that consciously promotes quality because quality is not an act, but a habit, as the great philosopher, Aristotle once said.

Ms Mutuku is head of National Quality Institute (NQI) and can be reached at [email protected]