Page 153 - The Handbook for Quality Management a Complete Guide to Operational Excellence

140 I n t e g r a t e d P l a n n i n g O r g a n i z a t i o n a l A s s e s s m e n t 141

to prompt the respondent in any way. It is important that the responses be
recorded verbatim, using the respondent’s own words. Participants are
urged to provide as many responses as they can; a group of 20 participants
will typically produce 80 to 100 responses.
The responses typically provide a great deal of information. When
grouped into categories, the categories may be examined to glean addi­
tional insight into the common themes. The responses and categories
can be used to develop valid survey items (see Chap. 6) or to prepare
focus­group questions. The follow­up activity is why so few people are
needed at this stage—statistical validity is obtained during the survey stage.
The results of the quality culture survey will be used to understand
the perceived strengths and weaknesses of the current quality initiative. It
may identify sources of resistance to change, as well as frustrations with
the status quo. Business­level improvement projects may be developed to
focus on specifically changing some aspect of the quality culture, or more
generally on transforming the quality effort to a more customer­focused
approach.

Organizational Metrics
Organizational metrics, sometimes called Key Performance Indicators
(KPI), are developed to understand the overall health of an organization.
They provide the fundamental element of balanced scorecards and dash­
boards, which are used to quickly show how well the organization is per­
forming relative to the past, a target, or both.
The choice of metric is important only so far as the metric is used to
guide behavior or establish strategy. Poorly chosen metrics may lead to
suboptimal behavior if they lead people away from the organization’s
goals instead of toward them. Joiner (1994) suggests three system­wide
measures of performance: overall customer satisfaction, total cycle time,
and first­pass quality. An effective metric for quantifying first­pass quality
is total cost of poor quality (see Cost of Quality section). Once chosen,
the metrics must be communicated to the members of the organization.
To be useful, the employee must be able to influence the metric through
his or her performance, and it must be clear precisely how the employee’s
performance influences the metric.
Rose (1995) lists the following attributes of good metrics:

• They are customer centered and focused on indicators that provide
value to customers, such as product quality, service dependability,
and timeliness of delivery, or are associated with internal work
processes that address system cost reduction, waste reduction,
coordination and teamwork, innovation, and customer satisfaction.
• They measure performance across time, which shows trends rather
than snapshots.

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