Is Quality really "everyone's job"? (or, In praise of clerical staff)

[This post is a bit of a digression from the main theme of discussing management systems, but it makes a point that is very unpopular these days -- even though I'm convinced it is all true. And it does connect to the topic of documented artifacts.]

You often hear people say, "Quality is everyone's job." Is it? Well, in the sense that everyone should do a good job, … sure. Of course. But in the last few posts I've been talking a lot about documented Quality artifacts: design reviews, meeting minutes, training documentation, and the rest. Who is supposed to write all these things and file them?

Years ago, I worked at a place where there was a lot of resistance to implementing formal Quality procedures. And one day I heard a rumor in the hallway that the hardware engineering manager had instructed his whole team to stay focused on their jobs and not to cooperate with the effort in any way. To this day I don't know if the rumor was true, but for all the voluntary support I got from that department it might as well have been. At the time, it made my job measurably more frustrating.

But you know what? He was right. And even if he never gave such an order, he would have been right to have given it.

Peter Drucker points out that "Concentration is the key to economic results."* If you try to do a little bit of everything, the best you can ever achieve is mediocrity; but if you focus your effort where you are strongest, you have a chance to achieve excellence. And indeed our hardware team at that company did achieve excellence. People who knew the products more deeply than I regularly assured me that we had the best hardware in the industry. When we were acquired by a global organization, and our product line was ranged against their much more extensive line so that they could "rationalize the portfolio" … our hardware was always kept, and it was the other, lookalike products that were discontinued. Every time.

Does that mean that our products would have been weaker if I had gotten more support during audits? Obviously there's no way I can know that. But the principle of concentration and focus is a valid one.

But in that case, who is supposed to fill out the forms if not the affected personnel? Who but the design engineers can possibly write Design Review Minutes, or fill out Engineering Change Orders?

Let me draw a distinction:

• On the one hand, the detailed technical information has to come from the technical experts -- for example, the design engineers. No-one else can possibly provide it.
• On the other hand the typing can be done by someone else. The metadata can be filled in by someone else. The routine information that is nonetheless required can all be added by someone else.

And that way the design engineers can focus on the work that no-one else in the company can possibly do.

Back in the 1960's, every company over a certain size had secretaries and other administrative roles. Today those roles are out of fashion. We think we are being lean by eliminating those roles.

But we're wrong. That's not lean. To force an engineer to type his own minutes or make his own travel arrangements is bloat, just like asking him to empty his own trash. It is to require that a very highly-paid resource squander his time on activities that add a very low value, activities that will never pay back the time he wasted on them. How can this be efficient?

Far more efficient is for the engineer to do engineering -- a high value-add activity that justifies his rate of pay -- and let someone who is paid a lot less do the tasks that anyone can do. This arrangement is actually preferable in two ways. First, as noted, the engineer's time is saved for engineering; second, the administrative worker (who is paid less than the engineer, remember) will do the administrative tasks far better -- more accurately and more efficiently -- than the engineer ever could! This is because the administrator does these tasks all day long, every day. He knows the subtleties that the engineer forgets, and so he fills out the forms right the first time. There is less churn in the system, and therefore less waste.

Naturally all this depends on the size of the company. If your whole company consists of three guys in a garage, then you probably don't have enough work to keep one administrator busy. At that point, yes, you probably all have to write your own minutes and make your own travel arrangements.

But as soon as the company is large enough to keep an administrative staff busy, it is to everyone's advantage to hire such staff and let them become experts at the administrative work that has to be done.

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* Drucker made this point repeatedly, but see for example his Managing For Results (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), pp. 11-13.