Agile Culture Part 2 - Strive For Quality

Last time we looked at supportive leadership and how that can really let people in an organisation become empowered.That feeling of empowerment will vanish pretty quickly if they feel that they just aren't achieving good results. Nothing is more demotivating than feeling that you have worked all day and achieved nothing, or made things worse. This is where quality comes in. People need to feel that they are doing a quality job to be really happy. Pride in your work is one of the biggest motivating factors out there. Quality is also great for an organisation. After all, if it's not producing quality, how likely is it to stay in business long term?

Now, when I mentioned quality, I'm betting a bunch of you immediately thought about things like defects, and testing, That's what most people associate with quality - building the thing right. But that's not all there is to quality. By itself, building the thing right only ensures that what you build is defect free. Is it the right thing? Building the right thing is an even more important aspect of quality. And what about the way we build it? Is it quality if our processes are bad so that what we build is late to market or too expensive? An organisation needs to consider all 3 aspects of quality before they can really say that they are producing a quality product.

Organisational Change, Leadership, AgilityDave Martin4 June 2019patterns, culture, quality, organisational changeComment

Build Quality In - Stop the Line

Hi Folks

If you ever visit a lean manufacturing plant you will see, at every workstation, a cord or button or lever attached to a big, red, flashing light. It's also attached to the production line machinery. Press that button, pull that cord or move that lever and two things happen - first, the big, red, flashing light starts flashing and the production line stops. In Lean Manufacturing, this system is called Andon (Japanese for Indicator).

AgilityDave Martin21 June 2013qualityComment