WORDS TO LEAD BY - Quality

We are continuing our lessons from Wally Adamchik's book titled Construction Leadership from A to Z.

His book explores "26 Words to Lead By."

This session's word is QUALITY

QUALITY

Quality - high grade; superiority; excellence

"It is easier to do a job right than to explain why you didn't." - Martin Van Buren

W. Edwards Deming may have said, "Quality is everyone's responsibility," but it is the leader who establishes and communicates the standard of quality desired.

Margins are tight and will remain that way. When you look at the profit and loss statement for any business, there isn't a line for rework. Quality is the key. It is the ante in the game of business. High quality has multiple payoffs. It means less waste, less rework, fewer rejections, fewer complaints and fewer returns. All this leads to lower costs and higher productivity.

William A. Foster put it this way: "Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution. It represents the wise choice of many alternatives.

Quality breeds quality. Aristotle told us that excellence is a habit.

"...inspect what you expect." He required us to be where quality was happening - to go out and see the job from a quality perspective and an end user viewpoint. "Leading quality" was another cryptic term he used.

"One of the rarest things that a man ever does is do the best he can." - Josh Billings

Quality Jumpstart

• Measure / track / record / display critical success factors.
• Raise your standards. What was good enough yesterday isn't good enough today.
• Communicate the new standards.
• Facilitate a discussion at work to define quality for your team.

How many times have we heard, read and even said, "There is never enough time to do it right, but always enough time to do it over"? The quality of our work is not controlled by our Quality Control Department, it is controlled by each of us and the decisions we make daily. Can we honestly say that we did our best today? Let's choose to improve quality today and every day!

Donald G. Rosenbarger
Senior Vice President
Delta Companies Inc