Since 2013, I've been looking for a company at which to enact the Total Quality dream of Chuck Horner whose mentor Bill Creech wrote the seminal book on "5 Pillars of Total Quality Management". It's barely 4 years since I reread (for the 5th time) Horner's "Every Man a Tiger", co-authored by Tom Clancy.

Horner also, to quote John Paul Jones, has something a professional officer must have: "the nicest sense of personal honor." Right and wrong are identifiable in Chuck's universe, and separate. In a community where a man’s word is his life, Chuck Horner’s word is found in gold lettering on an adamantine wall of granite. ~ Tom Clancy

Organizational Excellence

An OEx Team is the core team of a company that drives its Quality or Continuous Improvement Process. Like any team, it needs goals, iterations, leads, stakeholders, process and a prioritization system. So we suggest creating an "Organizational Excellence" project in your favourite Project Management Tool and rolling up your sleeves!

Quality not seen in the narrow way of testing each task, but as in the vision of Total Quality Management (Bill Creech)

We suggest you first list the factors that affect the outcome, such as

• Process
  • Technology and Tools
  • Reducing Bottlenecks and Dependencies
• Training
  • Feedback Loop on Errors and Learning
• Enthusiasm
  • Corporate Counselling
  • Team Building
  • In-office Spaces (Joyland)
• Personal Discipline (Due Diligence)
  • Checklists
  • Self SWOT Analysis
  • Time Management
• Talent
  • Skillset
  • Toolset
  • Sharpening the Saw
• Documentation
  • Intellectual Capital
• Task Management and Specifications Detailing
  • Running with the 2 line requirement

These become the categories / tags. Now the GOALS of the Management for each Team become the features that need to be achieved. What follows is a group (OrgEx team) exercise in task breakdown, estimation, prioritization and making a workable scope in each.

One a few milestones worth of goals and tasks are fed into the system, the key players from management are presented and a backlog grooming session is done. Launch the project and give the whole company / its team leaders tasks on a daily basis. It's now time to roll up your sleeves and get everyone working.

All the best. Tell me when the baby is born and management is happy with the outcome! In the meanwhile, should you wish to consult me, the charges are Rs 10,000 per day

See

• Tigers - A 2013 Note to Imran's Boss
• Evolving Sunlight Consulting