Leadership Training by QMII to Teach Leaders of People and Processes as a System.

QMII has always brought value to our alumni and clients by looking at the system in its totality and how the investment in the system will affect the bottom line positively. The Top Management plays a very important part in this. Our leadership training is for leaders to lead the people and processes as a system. The Awareness Leaders Workshop (AWS) has stood the test of time and been valued by leaders as they implement the system approach.

Effective from February 2014, QMII is launching additional training in leadership. This training has been planned based on inputs received over the years from our alumni including several CEOs and Top Management (TM) representatives of organizations that we have worked with. We are not planning at present to teach managers to be leaders. This is being done in the next stage in a separate training package.

 This training is not for teaching leadership to managers. Teaching leadership to managers is a completely different course to what our training on leading people and processes as a system. That would be the next step. The next stage of our training will include at least these 13 traits and perhaps a few more. An introductory lecture will mention these 13 traits: Attitude, External Awareness,   Professionalism, Initiative, Creative Thinking, Stress Management, Interpersonal Skills, Communication, Influence, Diversity, Conflict Resolution, Teamwork and Adaptability. My idea (and I am open to more discussion and inputs) is not to teach these leadership traits aspects more formally to meet the objectives of leaders as they implement their management systems to impact the bottom line, right to cash in the bank.

The leadership training being offered will teach leaders of people and processes as a system. This way we will not be are in danger of insulting the leaders who already have many of these traits.  We just mention them. This training strengthens the leadership training in making objective decisions using the system approach and not being in danger of regurgitating old-school people management styles, including blame culture without regard for the leaders’ responsibility to provide constancy of purpose and a management system that helps follower to fulfill the purpose. And we all will appreciate that a room full of leaders with desirable traits and competent people is ineffective.    They both need to work as parts of a process-based management system that is focused on creating more successful customers.  

QMII is therefore providing leadership training with the approach to process based management system.  We are assuming that the leaders who come to this training know these traits or will study them elsewhere or attend another of our courses where we will teach these.

Monitoring and Measuring Customer Satisfaction

Monitoring and Measuring Customer Satisfaction is covered under Clause 8.2.1 of ISO 9001:2008:

8.2.1 Customer satisfaction

As one of the measurements of the performance of the quality management system, the organization shall monitor information relating to customer perception as to whether the organization has met customer requirements. The methods for obtaining and using this information shall be determined.

NOTE Monitoring customer perception can include obtaining input from sources such as customer satisfaction surveys, customer data on delivered product quality, user opinion surveys, lost business analysis, compliments, warranty claims and dealer reports.

The question asked to me by a colleague was  if then measuring and quantifying customer satisfaction was a requirement, was it good for an organization. My final conclusion and recommendation after in house discussion with John (our Senior VP) is that in simple terms ISO 9001 does not require the organization to quantify the satisfaction of customers. Clause 8.2.1 does require the organization to monitor information related to customer perception with regard to requirements being met. In system terms I would say that Customer Feedback is part of the Check segment in the PDCA cycle. A restaurant may measure customer satisfaction by how they feel or the size of their tips. …or late payment may indicate customer dissatisfaction. This qualitative measurement of customer perception as required by the standard need not be quantitative. The second question is whether it is good for the business? This is up to the organization in how the management uses the input in the P-D-C-A cycle, both at the check stage as an input and at the Act stage for making changes to the plan. We can not blindly rely on what customers say. "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."- Henry Ford.