Quality Management and People Strategies

By: markweaver Monday December 22, 2014 comments

Working for Quality Guru and best-selling author Philip Crosby early in my career, I learned that there was a difference between Quality Control and Quality Management.  Quality Control is often after-the-fact measurement to determine if a product was within “Acceptable Quality Levels.”  That was what Phil called “Conventional Wisdom.”
 
There’s nothing wrong with Quality Control in its place; it just can’t make quality certain.  Quality Management, on the other hand, involves a common language, employee engagement, culture change, agreed upon expectations, problem resolution, and problem prevention – among other things.  It makes quality more than a department but instead part of the fabric of an organization.
 
It’s the same way with people strategies.  There is nothing wrong with conventional HR in its place.  Done well, it should keep an organization in compliance with the myriad of laws facing employers.
 
People strategies, on the other hand, involve a common language, employee engagement, culture change, agreed upon expectations, problem resolution, and problem prevention – among other things.  It makes the way an organization deals with its people more than a department but instead part of the fabric of the organization.  Sound familiar?  That’s why I like telling people I didn’t learn HR from an HR person.  I learned people strategies from a Quality Guru.