Quality & Teams
Quality
Management



What is it?
Teams and Quality Management
Changing to a QM Management System
Two Types of
Management System


Top Down
Employee Involvement - Quality Mgt.
Management
Systems
Employee
Motivation
Employee
Motivation
Productivity
&
Quality
Commit
Move
Resist
Where are
University Students?
Commitment: Employees highly
engaged, working hard, do extras,
care about high quality service,
products
Commit
Move
Resist
Movement: Employees do fair day’s
work for fair day’s pay, anxious to
leave at end of work day, don’t do
extras
Resistance: Employees work to
rule, fight management, engage in
sabotage, do just enough to get by
Model A
Top Down
Marketing
Engineering
Supervisor
Quality
Control
Appraisal
Line Team
Products
Services
Model B
Quality Management
Line Team
Marketing
Engineering
Quality
Control
Products
Services
Appraisal
Quality
Management
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
Employees make decisions at production,
service level
Focus on continuous improvement




Gather Information
Do statistical analysis
Make decisions
Control management of team:  How are we

Hire
 Fire
 Discipline

Focus on two
key questions:
Natural leadership
doing?
 How can we do
better?
Decision
Involvement Theory
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Knowledge: People at the production/service
level understand how to do their job better
than planners at the top
Decisions: If they make their own decisions,
they will be more committed to what they are
doing
Job Quality: The job is enriched …it has
dignity … rich work creates commitment
Dignity in Work
“My entire job consists of soldering six
connections as CD players roll by me on
an assembly line … and having a
supervisor scream at me if I make a
mistake. It takes more brains to heat up
my kids baby bottle than to do this job.”
QM Approach



Team responsible for assembling entire
CD player, testing it, packaging it,
shipping it, receiving customer
feedback.
Team controls who does what, speed of
work, special problems, how to do it
Team meets regularly to discuss how to
do better
Top Down Vs. Quality
Which is best?
 Top
Down Management
 Quality-Team Management

It depends:
 Market
 Technology
 Competition
 Employees

skills and motivation
Do you need commitment?
MacDonald’s
Which Model does MacDonald’s use?
 Top Down
 Fixed Technology: cook, wrap, sell,clean
 Homogenized Product
 Strict Rules and Procedures
 Close Supervision: Carrot/Stick
 Low Wages
Movement
 High Turnover
Celanese
Celanese - Edmonton Gen. Manager Andy Day:
“5 years ago we were in a situation where all operating
decisions were made in Toronto or Montreal.
Now those central offices have been cut from 500 to 40
people, but we still have 800 people working at Celanese
and now we make all the decisions.
We've now removed our Edmonton hierarchy and we've
passed all operating decisions to the production teams.
I'm still responsible - but they do a better job of helping
me with my responsibilities."
Conference Board
Competitiveness enhancement in the global
business environment is a major imperative
for Canadian business.
This is an era of stiff competition involving
well-organized players.
Team-based work and team contribution
figure prominently among organizations’
strategies to improve their performance.
Financial Post
The ”Total Quality Movement," or TQM, is sweeping the
country today.
TQM advocates participatory involvement of teamed
employees throughout all elements of an organization.
These ideas, originally developed in North America were
adapted by W. Edwards Deming to help Japan get on its feet
after the Second World War.
Only now are the United States and Canada catching on and
catching up with the vital recognition that every organization
- whether a school, a television station, or a multinational
corporation - performs better when its people work as fully
participative teams at every level of data gathering, problem
solving, decision making, and assessment of the institution.
Teams - the Key
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
People are used to operating
independently
TQM means they have to learn to
operate as a team making important
decisions
Xerox Corp.
Xerox CEO Paul Allaire.
"We believe in the power of teamwork;
75% of all Xerox employees are actively
involved in quality-improvement or
problem-solving projects in teams."
Why Teams?
 Synergy: two heads (or more) are better than
one
 Interdependency:
one
person's work affects the work of others
changing
one person's way of working
means changing the work of others
 Behaviour control: Teams control behaviour
more effectively than management rewards and
sanctions
Dilbert!
Can we agree
on this for the
start?
The
People
named
Theodore
ain’t gonna
like it.
Cliché,
Cliché!!
Overused
if you
ask me!
This isn’t
Shakespeare.
Let’s use
words we
all can
Understand!!!
 Student teams aren’t the same as work teams, but …
 What kinds of problems have you observed in
group/team work?
Problems with
Teams




Poor communication skills
Diffusion of responsibility
Groupthink - Going along
Social Loafing - Free Riding
“But,
I don’t like
working in groups!!!”
Managing the Team
 Team
 Good
dysfunction is prevalent
team functioning is difficult to
achieve, but is possible through training
2 Key Assumptions
 Quality Management, if done correctly &
if suited to the industry, is a good idea.
 People can be taught to be effective in
managing their teams.
Case


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Product = service industry
Management modality = top down
Organization size = small/medium
People:




average years of employment in industry about 15.3
Education level = high
Motivation = movement
Is this group a good prospect for TQM? Why?
Why not?
How About Us?



Quality Management is Good
You’re using Quality Management in this
Course.
Right???
TD or QM R Us?
What model are you using in this course? TD or
QM?
What’s the product?
Who makes the production decisions?
Who measures quality?
Who decides on corrective measures?
What are the consequences?
What are the
outcomes?
What is the typical level of engagement?
 Commitment:
I want to get it right
I’m part of this place
I do the extras that make a difference

Commit
Movement:
I follow the rules and provide a fair day’s work for a
fair day’s pay
My life is elsewhere - I don’t strongly identify with
my workplace
If more is needed, someone else can do it

Move
Opposition:
Sometimes I deliberately get it wrong
I feel alienated in this place
I work hard only when someone is looking
Resist
J. Edwards Deming
How do students react to the present command and
control structure of their courses?
Deming: “pay for performance systems create unhealthy
competition and dissention among employees”
Deming: “Management by Objectives (and performance
appraisal systems that are based on objectives) could be
called Management by Numbers, or as someone in
Germany suggested, Management by Fear. It's effect is
devastating. It nourishes short- term performance,
annihilates long-term planning, demolishes team-work,
nourishes rivalry and politics, and evokes cheating and
time lost playing with the numbers.
Is Deming Right?
Meyer
 Competitors are seen as enemies
 Perceptions of self become distorted positively and of competitors
negatively
 Interaction and communication with competitors are decreased
 A merit pay salary plan is likely to have the effect of threatening the
self-esteem of the great majority of employees because most will
not receive rewards that they feel their performance justifies.
 Extrinsic rewards kill intrinsic [commitment] motivation
Meyer: the Pay for Performance Dilemma
Management
systems
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What management systems are used in
this course?
Who sets the goals?
Who decides on the learning tasks?
Who determines the sequence?
Who measures performance quality?
Who distributes rewards?
Two Types of
Management System
TOP DOWN
Quality
Who sets company vision,
strategy, management systems?
CEO
CEO
Who sets work objectives?
Manager
Joint
Who designs work processes?
Manager
Team
Who designs performance
measures?
Manager
Joint/Team
Who evaluates performance?
Manager
Joint/Team
Manager
Joint/Team
Who distributes rewards?
What if you used
QM?
Your objective is learning about Quality
Management
How would you do it as a Quality Management
team?
What would be happening that isn’t happening
now?
What would you stop doing that you are doing
now?
Why Top Down?
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Instructor Control
Individual Focus
Non-Participatory
Movement
Why?
What do students and professors gain
by using this system?
What do they lose?
What if QM?
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What if Students were involved in:
Setting learning goals
Designing learning methods
Designing performance measurement
system
Do students have information that could
be of value in any of these decisions?
QM &
Interdependence
Are students interdependent? Do they need each other
for learning?
Is there a synergy potential? Can you learn more
through interaction with other students?
What if …?
Quality Management:
What would happen if ...
Professor Reshef enters the class and says our
goal is to learn about Quality Management.
Within that framework, I’d like you to be involved
in determining how we learn it, the pace at which
we learn it, and how we evaluate our learning ...
How would the students react?
Transitions
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Initial resistance: It’s a great idea, but not for
us.
Shared understanding of QM vs TD systems
and their consequences
Training in:
 Statistical
Quality Control Methods
 Working as a team
 Management of team - hiring, firing, discipline
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
Trial Period - Led by outsider
Routinization of method
Dilbert