Parasitic certifications? Part 4, Standards eating the world

My last two posts (here and here) discussed Scotlyn's charge that the proliferation of formal standards actually degrades Quality rather than enhancing it. But that is only half of her argument. Her other major point is that jobs in Quality are parasitic on the productive economy, replacing (and thereby eliminating) jobs that make things or add value, and therefore that the Quality business as a whole will ultimately destroy the economy that it lives on.

How far is this true?

Quality as parasite

In a strictly literal sense, of course, it is absolutely true that Quality is parasitic on productive jobs, in exactly the same way that Management is. Neither Quality nor Management is involved in the creation of value (unlike Design, Manufacturing, Logistics, or Service). Both Quality and Management are involved in the organization and monitoring of other people's work. In that sense, they have a lot in common.* 

So the first answer to the charge that Quality is parasitic should be, "Yes, but is that a problem?" If told that it is, we should pursue the analogy with Management to understand why it is a problem. Scotlyn expresses concern that Quality jobs can push out productive jobs, by consuming the resources that would otherwise have paid for them. In the same way, there are some companies where the members of Management assign themselves a disproportionate share of the proceeds, so that the firms cannot pay their other bills and go belly up. We know this sometimes happens, but nobody thinks that such failures invalidate the general concept of Management. All they prove is that — as a manager — you can't afford to get greedy. While it is possible for Management to ruin the enterprise, the answer is to do a better job of implementing Management, and not to do away with it altogether.

Does the analogy hold? I think it does. I have argued before in support of clerical staff, because they offload important work from people who should really be doing something else. And I propose that the same thing is true of Quality staff. Somehow there is an optimal level of administrative functions (by which I mean management, quality, and clerical work all bundled together) — in other words, a level at which the organization flourishes. With too few people in these functions, the organization trips and falls because there is no infrastructure to clear simple obstacles out of the way;** with too many, the organization chokes on its own bureaucracy and runs out of money by paying too many unproductive salaries. Somewhere in the middle has to be a Goldilocks point where the size of the administrative staff is just right.   

That, then, is what we should do. That is how we should implement Quality systems. And as you may have noticed, that has been the approach I have tried to advocate throughout this blog. But Scotlyn makes one final argument: regardless what we should do, she predicts, in fact "the global standards and certification industry will eventually eat production and the economy, and bring the whole thing to a collapse from too much top-heaviness, and too little bottom sturdiness."

Is she right?

Eating the world

The answer depends partly on the number of new global standards that are written, and partly on the number of industries that make them mandatory. On the first point, I think she may be on the right track; on the second, I am a little more sanguine.

What encourages the proliferation of standards is that there are no known limits on the number of things that can go wrong. And whenever something goes wrong, the easiest solution is to make a rule so that it can't happen again. So I see no obvious reason why the number of global standards — the number of rules — should ever level off, until the day comes when our whole current economic system turns obsolete and is replaced by something else that we can't imagine today.

Of course the problem with reflexive rule-making is that the first time you do it, you look decisive. After the twentieth time, you start to wonder whether you have unintentionally tied yourself in knots.   

Bear in mind, though, that any company which hires too many people into non-productive functions will sooner or later go bust. This is why I say I am more sanguine about the question how many industries will make these standards mandatory. In industries with wide profit margins — like aerospace, aviation, or the high-technology industries generally — we should expect global standards to be ubiquitous, because those industries can afford them. But in other industries, those with narrower profit margins, I think we can expect that standardization will get next to no foothold at all, because none of the firms in those industries can afford to hire the personnel. In other words, after the highly profitable industries are saturated with global standards, I tend to think that the spread of standardization will slow or stop. This may help to postpone the collapse that Scotlyn foresees. 

Thunderous noise

If Scotlyn is right — if the whole system does collapse and "make thunderous noise as it falls" — will that really be a problem?

For those of us with jobs in the Quality industry, it will likely mean unemployment. At a personal level, yes, that generally counts as a problem. But for the rest of the world?

It would be a serious setback to global trade if buyers and sellers stopped using uniform weights and measures, or if the specifications for ball bearings and light-bulb sockets were no longer reliably standard around the world. But those standards are the least likely to be abandoned, for exactly that reason.

It would be nice to think that some acceptable level of safety standards for food and appliances will remain in force internationally, but I don't know enough to make an argument that it's certain. Maybe it's not certain, and — if true — that would be a sad fact.

As for the management system standards, the ones that I know best, these would probably trigger the least immediate harm if they suddenly vanished. (For professional reasons, naturally I wish I could say otherwise. But no such luck.) In that sense, they are probably the most optional of the lot. If the global system of standardization collapses, the best case for the management system standards is if they remain as guidelines to best practices for managing organizations. That way, at least they could still benefit organizations who chose to implement them, even if external certification were no longer available or meaningful.

Summary

Where does this leave us? Let me summarize briefly the main points of Scotlyn's argument, and my replies to each, in order:

• "The relationship between certified standards and actual quality is fictional."
• It is certainly non-deterministic.
• "The standards will never be the products, nor ever be able to satisfactorily describe them."
• True.
• "It follows that the more standards, the less quality. Standardisation is, in fact, an essential component of the “crapification of things."
• Not so fast. Some level of standardization has its place — e.g., for critical health and safety aspects.
• Also the management system standards are valuable guidelines to good basic business practices.
• But yes, there is certainly a risk that too much standardization can undermine product quality.
• "The relationship between certified standards and the actual economy is parasitic, ...." 
• True. Just like management, no more and no less.
• "... in that the more jobs that are created to certify, to inspect, to manage, to comply, to produce documentation ..., the more that productive jobs ... are destroyed."
• Yes, all true. 
• But some non-zero number of administrative and Quality jobs are needed to allow the organization to function. 
• The key is to find the magic Goldilocks number, and the great trick is never to exceed it.
• "The global standards and certification industry will eventually eat production and the economy, and bring the whole thing to a collapse from too much top-heaviness, and too little bottom sturdiness."
• There are forces pushing in this direction, and others pushing against it. I don't know which forces will win. But you might be right.
• "Out of which, small, light, and fast non-compliant producers and purveyors who can stay below the radar and out of the limelight, will emerge and begin to create whatever comes next."
• From your lips to the ears of Heaven. 

Answering Scotlyn's remarks has been my longest single exercise of analysis and exposition since I started this blog, and I thank her — deeply and sincerely — for pushing me to do it. At the same time, I am well aware that other readers might disagree with some (or all!) of what I have written here. As always, please add your comments so we can make this a living discussion. The only way we can achieve continual improvement in our theory and practice of the Quality business is to talk to each other.

As always, let's talk.             

__________

* As an aside, I note that I've heard complaints about the uselessness of Quality far more often than I have heard the equivalent complaints about Management. I'm not sure why.   

** In The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Douglas Adams characterizes this extreme as the point at which the entire Golgafrinchan population dies off from an infectious disease contracted from an "unexpectedly dirty" telephone.