10% is hard to pick up at this late stage, so I racked my brain for ways to boost my performance. I had put two years of my life, involving a lot of personal sacrifice, into this degree and I didn't want to miss the top grade in the last leg of the race. So I made a decision; I had approximately ten days until final submission – I could surely improve my paper by 1% each day?  Each night I visualised the numbers in my mind – as large as I could fit in my mental movie screen.  I saw my current grade, and imagined the number moving up by 1% each night. By day I worked in the traditional way on my paper, but this mental focus on the numbers helped to keep me on track. I did make the grade, and graduated with a first class honours. 

I credit my powers of visualisation with helping me to achieve something that I am still very proud of.  When the chips are down, you have to marshall all the resources at your disposal, and visualisation is one of the most powerful resources avilable to us.

“Fortune can only take away what she has given; but she does not give virtue, and therefore she cannot take it away.  Virtue is free, inviolable, unmoved, unshaken, so steeled against the blows of chance than she cannot be bent, much less broken. Facing the instruments of torture she holds her gaze unflinching, her expression changes not at all, whether a hard or happy lot is shown to her.  Therefore the wise man will lose nothing that he will regard as a loss; for the only possession he has is virtue, and of this he can never be robbed.  Of everything else he has the use only on sufferance”.

In my opinion, there are many more attributes or values which a person can maintain, despite outside circumstances.  For example; integrity, honesty, strong work ethic, cheerful outlook, determination, persistence, flexibility, open-mindedness and a willingness to learn. I am sure you can add more to this list.  My point is that regardless of what is happening, be it an economic downturn, an upcoming budget or changing market trends, a person can always use their core values, knowledge and skills in order to make the best of the present situation.

As with any other kind of investment, you need to decide which is the most appropriate investment for you, be it a course you are taking, a book you plan to buy or a newspaper you wish to subscribe to.  While some choices are obvious e.g., a small business owner taking a course in public relations, sometimes it is worthwhile to study around your main topic of interest – or even in an unrelated area.  The latter might be considered a higher risk investment, but it may lead to a completely new set of opportunities or generate new ideas.

If you invest wisely in yourself, your knowledge and skill base can be an asset that appreciates in value and pays dividends over time.  By shoring up your earning ability through knowledge investment, you can truly be “recession proof”.  I will close with a quote by the noir writer Walter Mosely:

“A person with no books is inconsequential in a modern setting, but a peasant who reads is a prince in waiting.”

The key things for us is that we are meeting customer requirements, but also what the quality group are bringing to the table in terms of making things better, cheaper, more effective.

(Bob King, Quality Manager for Apple – Europe, Middle East, Africa).

While quality staff are often seen as an overhead, the fact is that the real costs actually reside in the ‘cost of getting it wrong’, and quality staff are generally engaged to either directly or indirectly reduce those costs through the quality management system:

In the real world, the cost of poor quality for some organisations is the big issue because it can range from anywhere between 15% and 25% of their annual sales turnover. The cost of poor quality in that case is the cost of getting it wrong: the cost of rework, repair, returns, scrap which makes up the hidden factory in any company. Then you have the invisible costs which are loss of reputation, and poor delivery performance, which is hard to quantify.  If you have a good quality function, you can expect to get a return on your quality system if you are trying to reduce the cost of poor quality. Because that is what stakeholders and managers really want; return on investment.  To address the cost of poor quality, you need to have the resource commitment.  But a lot of the managers think that the cost of quality is the quality department e.g. the quality manager, the quality inspectors. But that isn’t the true cost of quality – the cost of quality is the cost of getting it wrong.

(Desmond Butler, Director, Almir Business Ltd).

There is no doubt that there is a bias on the part of management to view traditional quality department activities as being costs and overheads. However, if quality staff were involved in more general cost reduction projects, their contribution would be perceived to be of a higher value to the organisation.

Contributers: www.almir.biz, Bob King, Apple, Cork.

“Quality assurance is integrated into the process: therefore they (quality staff) should be fully involved with their business hats as well as their quality hats as well as their science hats.  They need to be able to move between the different realms. Because at the end of the day, we are a business.”

According to Michael Gerard Kelly, Chief Executive Officer at Kelmac Group, quality professionals need to possess business skills in order to build the brand, reduce risk and communicate with other members of the organisation:

“Quality professionals need to have business skills e.g. to build brand and reduce risk. Quality professionals need to speak business language in order to interact with the organisation.”

The importance of good communication between quality staff and top management was further highlighted by Desmond Butler, Director at Almir Business Ltd:

“The challenge is that the quality department must to make management aware of what is needed, what the quality management system means to them as a business.  Because I think that it is only when the management get involved, that they can realise the benefits to them.  So getting management on board right from the start of any quality initiative is a key challenge”

Significant potential exists in terms of optimising the role of quality professionals within the organisation, and it is essential that their core competencies are revised with training delivered accordingly. These competencies now need to include business skills, communication skills and analytical skills, as well as the ability to manage the relationships with multiple stakeholders such as top management, customers, regulators, internal staff and suppliers.

Contributors:

www.kelmacgroup.com

www.almir.biz

http://kerrycoaching.weebly.com/breakthrough-at-the-parknasilla-hotel.html

The main distinctions between quality and value:

1. The customer defines value (performance relative to cost)

2. Quality defines how well an enterprise satisfies the performance element in the value equation

Organisations need to ensure that customer value is their primary objective in order to make quality part of everyone’s responsibility and this is achieved by ensuring that everyone knows their customer and what their customers consider important.  In a case study, a telephone service centre employed a benchmarking process to assist the company to attain best practice standard without determining if this aim was of value to the customer: the reality was that the customer only wanted minor service improvements so the company’s efforts were unnecessary to a large extent. This case is an example of where quality targets were set without considering what was truly valued by the customer.