Total Quality Management

by John P. Joyce, CLP

During the 1980s many local governments, especially park districts and municipal recreation agencies, adopted customer service programs. Managers concerned about the declining reputation of government and pressure to justify local tax rates moved to increase responsiveness to citizens through more effective customer service. While many of these training programs rightly acknowledged the key role of upper management in the process, my hindsight indicates most were little more than programs to coach behavioral change and improve "the attitudes" of frontline service workers.

While much good came from these training efforts, many agencies discovered that without improved methods and processes, the frontline service worker—management's customer — was really being let down. The customer training dubbed "Smile Training" and aimed at frontline workers, didn't hold up in the face of bureaucratic rules, procedures and departments that would not cooperate when doing the public's business.

Enter the growing acceptance of the management practices of the late W. Edwards Doming, called Total Quality Management (or TQM). TQM is based upon the belief that 85 percent of the factors influencing quality are attributable to the individual worker. And who controls the system? Management, of course. The philosophies of Deming and the other quality gurus, Joseph Juran and Philip Crosby, were credited with rebuilding Japan's industrial capacity after WWII and only recently have been widely adopted in our country. TQM has brought about such notable success stories as Xerox, Ford and Motorola in our area. In the public sector, the U.S. Navy and Forest Service, Florida Power and Light, and the City of Madison, Wisconsin, have successfully adopted the TQM process.

The principles of "Continuous Improvement to the System," "Employee Involvement" and "Data-Based Decisions" are at the foundation of TQM. TQM isn't simply new slogans or the latest new management program. It must be a new way of life in the organization. It's a radical restructuring of how problems are solved — part human relations, part systems theory and part statistics. The Deming Flow Diagram depicts the whole process as an integrated operation involving multiple departments and divisions, the customer and the agency's suppliers.

THE PARK FOREST STORY

The Village of Park Forest initiated TQM about two years ago. During this time the Village staff and our TQM project teams have experienced the ups and downs common with instituting this new way of working.

TRAINING

Prior to initiating the program Village-wide, department heads and management staff participated in nearly 80 hours of training over a nine-month period. This training is essential for successfully initiating TQM. Like many organizations in the public sector, wall-to-wall house training of all staff was a new approach for us. Training was conducted by in-house personnel and started with the TQM philosophy as summarized by Deming's 14 Points. This part of the training made for some lively discussions, for many of Deming's 14 points contradict many of the basics we learned in business school.

The next part of our training involved leadership and group process. While the team approach may not seem difficult, it is unconventional and requires the unlearning of many behaviors in an organization. An organization using TQM has been likened to a good orchestra. The players are not there to play solos as prima donnas, each one trying to catch the ear of the listener. They are there to support each other. Like the fine orchestra, the obligation of each department, division or individual worker is to contribute its best to the system, not to maximize its own production or performance. As a follow-up we have offered leadership training for employees at all levels in the organization.

Finally, the TQM methodology, data collection and analysis techniques were introduced. Simple tools and techniques are used to collect data and become standard TQM procedures in order to meet the goal of "data-based decisions."

After the management team was trained, two initial project teams were selected. All team members participated in an abbreviated 20-hour training session.

THE TQM STRUCTURE AND DEFINITIONS

Upon completion of management training, a steering committee was selected from upper management to keep the program going. The steering committee was made up of the Village Manager, Deputy Manager and two assistants who were responsible for the TQM training. This committee considered various suggestions for initial TQM projects and picked two around which to organize the first teams.

A guidance team was established for each project team. Members of the guidance team were department heads associated with the project under study. The key to the guidance team is to involve individuals in the organization with the authority to change duties, transfer funds, adopt new procedures and otherwise make significant changes that may come as rec-

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ommendations from the project teams.

The project teams are made up of employees from all levels, both vertically and horizontally, in the organization. The team members should be involved in day-to-day association with the project or problem under study. The team should be made up of five to nine members from across department lines. Upon close analysis, almost every program or service involves cooperation from other departments or divisions. The project team includes two key leadership positions. The team leader may be a mid-level manager or supervisor who is very familiar with the project under study. He or she is responsible for scheduling and running the team meetings. The facilitator should be from an outside department or division. It's best if the facilitator is not directly associated with the project so as to have "no stake in the action or outcome." The facilitator is in charge of group process and should be trained in group dynamics and know what to observe in groups. The role of the facilitator is to keep the group on task and arrange "just in time training" as needed.

IMPLEMENTING TQM

Many want a catalog of easy steps or to send everyone else to a one-day seminar. There are several implementation models, but the most effective ones start at the top and work their way down in the organization — a model known as cascading. Hopefully, we learned this from customer service training. Top management must learn and commit to TQM first, then teach it to the next level of management. This assures management buy-in before this new way of working is introduced to supervisors and line employees. In Park Forest, management staff spent nine months on TQM before it was introduced to frontline employees. It is natural for employees to look to management for leadership. In organizations that have tried TQM, management has been responsible for making it work, but also the major cause of most failures. You need only kill the messenger once and word gets through the organization quickly. TQM is not implemented until it is experienced. You can teach employees all of the tools of TQM, but you don't have its true benefit until the organization has the TQM culture as well.

TYPICAL CAUSES OF FAILURE

There are several common causes of failure during implementation. Here are a few:

1. When TQM becomes just another "flavor of the month."By the time line staff are introduced to TQM, management is off to the next management program.

2. We expect too much too soon. TQM is a slow process.

3. TQM is used simply to save money and cut costs. While TQM can save an organization considerable money, it will also make major improvements in the quality of work life for employees. Projects selected should strike a balance between the two.

4. Some managers may not accept it. Some just cannot tolerate bringing employees in on decisions. Others may resent taking the time to reassess long-standing rules and procedures.

5. Not everyone will believe! Some people don't believe in anything. You're not going to sell everyone. The rule of thumb is 20-60-20. Usually 20 percent will believe no matter what, 60 percent will believe after some training and in- volvement, and another 20 percent will never believe. Don't deny 80 percent of your people because you can't convince the last 20 percent.

6. Poor planning. Often we try to jump in and expect immediate results. One of Deming's key techniques is the "Plan- Do-Check-Act" cycle. With implementation of TQM, as with analyzing any work process, the majority of the time should be spent on the planning phase.

TQM IS NOT CONVENTIONAL THINKING

At first blush, many will find Deming's views and the philosophy of TQM controversial and unconventional. His theory represents a fundamentally different way of viewing management The following are just a few examples of how TQM concepts may be viewed as contrary to the more conventional management thinking we are used to — some food for thought, discussion and debate.

1. Quality and cost are not opposites with one being unproved at the expense of the other. Both can constantly be improved.

2. Most defects and incidents of poor service are caused by the system, not by individual workers. Too often our response is to "beat up" the individual worker rather than improve the system.

3. Create cooperation and eliminate competition — cooperation between agencies and their suppliers, between departments or divisions within the organization, and between employees. Competition leads to loss. People pulling in opposite directions on a rope only exhaust themselves.In cooperation everybody wins!

4. Our reward and evaluation systems are counterproductive and give employees mixed messages. Appraisal and reward systems based upon individual performance eventually digress into rating and ranking people. We rank people against each other, reward some more than others through a "merit system" and then say, "Cooperate and work together." Deming says "abolish performance review and institute leadership."

5. Eliminate numerical quotas, M.B.O., and M.B.R. Instead, understand and improve the system and work processes. Quotas do not improve quality! Improve the process and results will follow! By the time results are known it's too late to improve processes and methods.

6. Cease awarding contracts based upon price alone. Analyze the total cost of the process.

THE REST OF THE (Park Forest) STORY

Park Forest usually thinks of itself as sophisticated in these matters. We're used to being in the news, usually at the head- end of municipal issues like this. While most of the literature said it would take three years or more to install TQM, we thought certainly we could do it in slightly more than a year. While teamwork and employee involvement were purported to be a new experience for most work groups, we were used to working in teams, having a relative "flat" organization and pretty good employee morale.

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But two years later, while TQM has definitely benefited our organization, our experience (it turns out) had been largely predicted during our training. And in my contacts with other public sector agencies considering TQM, I think we have made a much greater commitment than most. We have managers and supervisors who are wrestling with all the training as an "interruption" of the real work. The commitment of our top management team has waned from time to time under the press of other Village issues. We have departments who, in training, buy into the concept of cooperation versus competition, only to return to the real world to promulgate work rules, procedures and methods which are demeaning to some employees in other departments. Many of our managers are struggling with the issue of what to do (or not do) about performance reviews and our merit classification system. We've learned that gaining knowledge, even accepting it, is one thing, but changing individual behavior and then organization behavior is quite another. We, too, have our 20 percent who have gone through all the processes but still haven't bought in. Our project teams too, have had basically the experience predicted. We had a project team work nine months on a project, come up with a solution (out of their experience) only to realize that they hadn't collected any data. Another team floundered because some key members left our organization while others were too busy with the real day-today work. We also found that many projects were already being accomplished using teams and work projects, but we failed to include them under the TQM umbrella, thus missing an opportunity to add to the TQM "band wagon."

Overall, I think our experience with TQM has been a very positive one for most employees. While we have learned that indeed it does take years to change the culture of an organization, most employees have been very positive about the TQM training. Even if the TQM techniques learned were not immediately put to use, the training event itself and the opportunity to join with employees from other departments and at other levels in the organization was received very positively. What do we do now? A statement commonly used by Ken Blanchard probably says it best. He poses the question, "How many diets does it take to lose weight?" The answer he gives to his own question is of course, one — only the one you stick to! How many management systems will it take to improve our productivity, employee morale, work processes, and customer service? Only the one we stick to! I hope we redouble our efforts and stick to this one.

John Joyce is Director of Recreation & Parks and Assistant Manager in Park Forest, IL. He also conducts training programs in Total Quality Management, Leadership and Workplace Diversity. For a copy of Deming's 14 Points, contact John at (708) 748-2005.*

36* Illinois Parks & Recreation* July/August 1994