Quality - The Unfair Advantage

In a recent post on his bog, Paul Borwaski, CEO of ASQ, shared a fantastic turnaround story about Corning Glass. As usual Paul choses his subjects wisely and presents his thought crisply.
See the case study here.
Here are some key insights from Corning’s revival and dominance through Quality that I could summarize for you.
Winning the Baldrige is not enough Wining the MBNQA takes a lot of doing. It needs passion, dedication, consistency, intelligence, and a lot more to remain on the path of excellence and lift the award. But we can’t rest after we win. New challenges emerge requiring new responses. Corning Glass’s case clearly demonstrates how quickly we can slip if we drop the ball.
Quality is a Board subject J M Juran famously predicted that in the 21st century only two functions will need to report to the CEO. Finance and Quality. Finance has always held this place and will continue to do so. With Corning Glass’s case it is reiterated that once Quality slips lower in the organizational…

Training employees for them to deliver better results has been a long standing principle of quality management.  Both Juran and Deming and later Ishikawa were very strong proponents of professional training. No one can really deny that training is important and must be done.  My issues are the what, why, who, when of training.
Paul Borwaski, CEO or ASQ, recently shared findings on professional training in quality as part of the ASQ’s Global State of Quality research. I am trying to respond here with my own observations (which is the my interpretation of research J )
What do we train about? And Why?
A lot of people I meet talk about strategic intent in training. We should train employees on what is strategic. It should be a strategic fit. You get what I mean.
We also want return of investment from training. While these are nice words to use, the truth is much more basic. Employee survey after survey shows that staff (the people who actually work!) are not happy with the training they get. …