|
Moving
From Management to Leadership
You passed your audit, received an ISO 9001
certificate and have personally thanked all
of the hard-working employees who helped make
your implementation a success.
Everything seems to have worked out great! You
now qualify as an approved vendor for any customer
requiring third-party certification as a condition
of doing business. A copy of your certificate
hangs proudly in the main lobby, and your systems
appear to be operating as intended.
As time passes, however, you begin to discover
that your organization is exhibiting unintended
results. Indeed, a whole new set of problems
may have cropped up, some even more complex
and vexing than those that existed before registration.
Productivity has dropped in a few departments.
The number of audit findings seems to be increasing,
not everyone agrees on how to improve their
operations, and a few folks are even resisting
further changes as a result.
What is going on?
Your systems are probably exhibiting growing
pains on their way to maturity. How successfully
they survive this period depends on one critical
factor not mentioned in the ISO 9001 standard:
leadership.
It is leadership - not management - that ultimately
determines how successfully your systems are
functioning. Organizational leadership, often
given short shrift, is one of the most critical
factors contributing to the long-term success
of your management systems.
Try to imagine your organizational leader as
an orchestra conductor. Conductors set the pacing,
intensity and coordination among different musical
instruments. Conductors also select the music
and arrange the pieces into an overall program.
In this context, your ISO management system
functions like sheet music for an orchestra.
The musical notations provide guidance for each
musician and represent an integrated system
to ensure uniform interpretation (time signatures,
notes and scales), integration (scoring for
different instruments) and thematic consistency.
Much like the sheet music, your ISO management
system procedures and policies provide a system
of information storage that is interpreted and
reconstructed to create a tangible output. Leaders
coordinate and guide this interpretation and
reconstruction, bringing together what would
otherwise be a set of diverse individual elements
into a beautiful symphony.
Managers tend to focus on discrete, tangible
aspects of day-to-day operations while leaders
- in the role of the conductor - direct the
flow of energy and information to achieve organizational
goals. Leaders set the organizational tempo,
communication dynamics, event duration and issue
articulation.
While managers tend to be defined organizationally
by their designated roles, leaders are defined
more by who they are as people and what they
do that leads to organizational success.
Leaders create a vision for long-term success,
while managers structure and supervise the changes
that can make that vision a reality. It is up
to the leaders to model the desired tone of
the network of personal relationships into a
unique organizational culture.
Table 1. The Top Ten Leadership Tasks and Their
Effects on the Organization
|
Leadership Task |
Effect on Organization |
|
Provide direction - mission, vision, purpose |
Creates employee understanding of why
they are working for the organization
and helps them become motivated to achieve
organizational goals |
|
Empower for change |
Allows bottom-up change from those closest
to operations for maximum effectiveness
of corrective and preventive actions |
|
Innovate for change |
Encourages creative solutions to problems
as well as development of new market-based
products and services |
|
Model and reinforce values |
Provides foundation for employee fulfillment
and excitement |
|
Provide accountability for performance
levels |
Instills sense of personal responsibility
for organizational activities |
|
Maintain focus on strategic goals |
Keeps everyone on track and counters organizational
"drift," reinforces policies
and sets agenda for systems performance |
|
Address fundamental assumptions that prevent
breakthrough improvement |
Deepens the learning about business process
management and integrates key processes
with organizational strategies |
|
Model commitment to systems goals |
Serves as example for performance excellence |
|
Provide strategy for systems development
|
Delivers a general set of actions for
improvement and sets the context within
which personnel perform their jobs |
|
Create atmosphere for learning and growth |
Encourage employee self-development and
sense of ownership |
Leadership, as an organizational characteristic,
is critical for long-term organizational success.
W. Edwards Deming stressed the institution of
leadership, as he felt that it should replace
numerical goals and production quotas, and it
should be used to establish cooperative relationships
so that "the aim of supervision is to help
people do a better job." Leadership, according
to Deming, could also be used to drive out fear
and substitute for slogans - instead, leaders
create the environment for learning, pride of
workmanship and continual improvement. We need
only look at the remarkable transformation of
Japanese industry over the past few decades
to hear the ring of truth in Deming's words.
The critical leadership tasks are shown in Table
1. We can easily see the impact effective leadership
has upon management system growth and development.
Leadership, however, is not without its demands,
not the least of which is an advanced skill
set. Experienced leaders know that, while skills
can be learned, it is in their application that
one practices the art of leadership.
Author:
Anton G. Camarota; Quality Systems Update (www.qsuonline.com)
, July 2003
|
