Seven principles

Euclid, By Jusepe de Ribera - J. Paul
Getty Museum, Public Domain.

In day to day work, we often take for granted our basic understanding of Quality as a discipline. This is as it should be. Normally we're busy, we've got problems to solve, and we know that the Quality tools will help us solve them. There's no need to go all the way back to Euclid every time we have to measure a right angle.

But suppose we wanted to go back? What foundations does the Quality discipline actually stand on? Are there any, or is it just something we cooked up among ourselves because it sounded good?

Of course the answer depends on what part of the Quality discipline you ask about. The field's statistical tools are all based (obviously!) on statistics, which is a well-understood branch of mathematics. Problem-solving methods like PDCA are basically an application of the scientific method to industrial or business problems.

What about management systems? Are those based on anything?

Yes, actually they are.

The standard ISO 9000:2015 enumerates seven basic Quality Management Principles, on which rests the whole structure of the ISO quality management system standards, as well as any particular quality management system you or I might implement for our own companies. Because these principles are so fundamental, I thought it could be useful if I take a few weeks to analyze them one at a time, in order to unpack what each principle means and why it is there. That's my plan for the next seven weeks, unless it gets interrupted by something urgent.

But there's a question I'd like to address right at the beginning: Why these principles in particular? Is there really something that makes them more fundamental than any others?

The seven quality management principles are these:

• Customer focus
• Leadership
• Engagement of people
• Process approach
• Improvement
• Evidence-based decision making
• Relationship management    

Clearly they are all important. Clearly they are all good things to do. But what makes them any more fundamental than any other principles you might think of?

The point is that quality management systems are designed for use by organizations. 

• An organization is a social organism. 
• In order to continue to exist (to survive, or especially to prosper), an organization must use rational self-reflection in order to adapt to its environment.
• And in order to pursue Quality, an organization must (by definition) focus on the needs and wants of its customers and interested parties.

All of this follows more or less from the definition of quality management systems, and from basic observations about the nature of organizations. But look at the consequence.

• Customer focus means that the organization has to focus on the needs and wants of its customers and interested parties.
• Leadership and Engagement of people are fundamental to the definition of an organization as a social organism. Without Leadership, there is no unity or common purpose, and therefore no organism. Without Engagement of people there is no organism in another sense, because the people will just wander away.
• The Process approach and a commitment to Improvement give the organization the tools for rational self-reflection.
• Evidence-based decision making and Relationship management both mean that the organization adapts to its environment. Evidence-based decision making is how the organization adapts to the facts in its environment. And Relationship management is how the organization adapts to the other entities (persons, interested parties, or other organizations) in its environment. 

That's what makes these principles so fundamental.

In the coming weeks, we'll unpack them in detail.