Pat Townsend is an internationally acclaimed author and speaker on Complete Quality Processes (CQP), a unique approach to ensuring that an organisation's quality effort benefits from the knowledge, ability, and enthusiasm of every person on the payroll. He will be in Kathmandu later this month at the invitation of the Nepal-based Network for Quality, Productivity & Competitiveness to conduct a two-day workshop on Leading for Quality. Townsend talked to Nepali Times this week about quality-consciousness.

Nepali Times: How do you define Complete Quality Processes (CQP) for manufacturing and service sectors?
Pat Townsend: Quality became useful as a concept when it was recognised that there were principles and practices that manufacturing and services, profit and nonprofit, have in common. We divide quality into two parts: quality in fact and quality in perception. Quality in fact is achieved when you meet your own expectations by accomplishing what you set out to do. Quality in perception is achieved when a customer believes that what you made or did is going to fulfill his or her expectations.

Does CQP work in a developing country like Nepal?
We could talk about quality as the great equalising tool in international competition. It is actually broken down into three pieces: leadership, participation, and measurement. In developing countries, it is true that quality provides the vocabulary and tools to compete in an international marketplace, but it does this by making sure that any enterprise has a good start on a local level. TATA motors recently changed its focus as a provider of utilitarian vehicles with its bid for Jaguar. That wasn't a random decision, but reflects questions we were asked in a workshop two years ago.

What is the connection between leadership and quality?
Leadership is inseparable from quality because leadership has the responsibility to create the environment in which quality practices operate. That includes everything from clarity of purpose, budget and time allocations, rules and tools, and setting the example for others to follow. Management is the rational subset of leadership while productivity is the rational subset of quality.

Some critics say that price and quality are commodity attributes in today's competitive marketplace.
When critics say that price and quality are common attributes, they are looking mainly at customer perception. But quality in fact looks beyond attractiveness, reliability, and affordability to look at the practices that produce the product or service. Innovation and creativity are merely two of those practices-although two that are currently receiving the most attention. We've included them in our workshops for over a decade.

A motivated workforce is said to be critical for quality goods and services. How can an organisation be motivated?
Oddly, senior management cannot motivate the workforce. What it can do is provide the environment in which workers can motivate themselves. This is a critical distinction. What quality does is democratise the workplace. It enables everyone to use his or her best judgment and develop sophisticated analytical skills. Senior management must structure the organisation so that there are the fewest roadblocks possible between a good idea and its implementation.

How do firms go about developing quality measurements so that they can keep track of what they do well?
Too many organisations want to look at measurement as the whole package. In this model, leadership decides on the measurement, directs the workforce to use it, records the results, makes adjustments based on the leadership's judgement. What this leaves out is the talents of most of the organisation. Management should above all be responsible for deciding which quality tools to use. Think of tools in two categories: doing things right and doing right things.

Employees can use any number of simple tools to determine whether they are doing their jobs right: flow charts, SPC, Six Sigma, Ishikawa fishbone-even something as simple as brainstorming. These are most useful at the management level. The caution is that over-reliance on any one tool produces stagnation and is totally counter-productive.

Pat Townsend will conduct the \'Leading for Quality\' seminar on 20-21 May at the Radisson Hotel, Contact: Direction Nepal [email protected]