Page 177 - The New Gold Standard

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ment processes in the manufacturing sector. By benchmarking
companies that made products that experience inevitable manu-
facturing defects, Ritz-Carlton decided to track service and
physical property defects against high-quality standards. This
analysis of manufacturers helped leadership at Ritz-Carlton
appreciate that the longer defects went undetected, the more ex-
pensive the defects were to repair. Additionally, the longer a de-
fect remained in place, the more that defect caused other errors.
Despite having been chosen the recipient of the 2007 ASQ
Ishikawa Medal, a highly prestigious individual honor con-
ferred by the American Society for Quality, John Timmerman,
vice president of quality and program management, reflects on
the need to make quality issues the focus of every individual
at Ritz-Carlton. “A gentleman I know and respect in the qual-
ity improvement world once said to me, ‘John, every time I go
someplace, people talk about you and how you’re leading quality
in your organization.’ As I was driving home that night, I real-
ized that he had given me the worst compliment I’d ever received
and that I never wanted to get that compliment again. It should
not be the role of a senior leader to ‘lead quality’ in an organiza-
tion. Instead, my role for the hotel should be to help influence a
‘quality culture.’ Everyone in this organization is responsible for
quality.”
Often senior-level leaders are far removed from the customer
and how work really gets done. To be effective, leaders have to
collect quality data from their people, analyze the data for trends,
and have the front line help remedy broken processes. Senior
managers are most effective when they perform “the 3C’s”: col-
lecting, compiling, and communicating quality performance data.
By destigmatizing breakdowns, thereby encouraging employees
to forthrightly track shortcomings and take responsibility for
product quality, leadership receives data that can readily be
used to improve processes and rescue the customer experience—
freeing staff time for meeting the true stated and unstated needs
of the guests.

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