Summary and updated information is provided on the work “ ISO 9000, its business and social impact” prepared by the authors in 2005, so that the workers of the UCT Escambray in Havana, belonging to the Ministry of Construction of the Republic of Cuba, have information in relation to some of the main results that have been reported in the world linked to the development and implementation of quality management systems, the difficulties that may arise during the process and the advantages that derive from such implementation, with the aim of contributing to the motivation and development of such a process, to the dissemination of international experience, and of the authors' own experience, since incentivize and stimulate the development and implementation of quality management systems as an important way to achieve better results in the management of this entity and, at the same time, as a tool that will positively contribute to the improvement of its image, competitiveness, trust and security of its clients. It is briefly addressedsome aspects associated with Change Management in Organizations so that this knowledge can contribute to a more effective and efficient Change Management within the framework of the implementation of the Quality System, as well as some experiences of the authors when conducting similar processes.
Introduction
Globalization, unipolarity, global village, are not myths that qualify the end of a millennium, they are realities that fundamentally face developing countries at the end of a decade marked by a new economic order that conditions new ways of doing, creating, to investigate and an expansion in terms of the expectations of those who inhabit this planet, also marked by a notable deterioration of the environment.
The role of quality today acquires a relevant condition if we take into account the globalization of the economy and international trade, in which the consumer has become the main subject of everything we do.
Undoubtedly, the increasing trend towards globalization of the international economy and trade, together with the scientific-technical achievements, have considerably increased the role of quality as a determining factor in production processes and services.
The trade has shown, along with other factors, the need for solid Quality Management Systems, with qualified testing laboratories and calibration of measurement instruments, with technical standards of proven rigor, as well as effective systems of certification and accreditation.
The trade has shown, along with other factors, the need for solid Quality Management Systems, with qualified testing laboratories and calibration of measurement instruments, with technical standards of proven rigor, as well as effective systems of certification and accreditation.
Quality and organizational change.
It is necessary to conceive and design a quality system that guarantees that the aspects related to quality begin with education and end with education, through a planned and ascending process of knowledge, so that a culture is created in this regard and, consequently, work skills and habits are developed that favor quality work. Therefore, it is necessary to avoid the supposed attempts to improve quality through a campaign, which would limit the possibility of seeing it as a continuous, systematic process of habit creation and development, sustained and maintained throughout, and not through momentary spikes and slogans. Quality will have to be a participatory product of permanent, bottom-up, systemic and systematic achievement.
In Quality, at the present time, the change is towards Quality Management, as the upper stage of quality assurance and, at the same time, the window that will lead us to Total Quality, through a process of improvement continuous, which meets the needs and expectations of customers, as the main element of our care and towards whom we must direct all the efforts of our Company.
Education brings awareness of the need for change and provides the means by which it can take place, but it has to be understood and applied as a systematic and systemic process divorced from all formalism.
Nothing is simple anymore, nothing is stable in the business world. The business environment changes visibly, quickly, radically, and in a way that leaves us perplexed.
Now, whatever we do is not enough. What we should get used to is incremental change, which we cannot manage gradually, with careful and slow planning; Yes, careful, but not slow, and in this situation, we have to be able to create and guarantee broad consensus and controlled execution. Thus, we are forced not only to manage change but we have to create it, sometimes big changes and quickly. At these times if we pause to consider matters very calmly, the situation will change before our very eyes, and our careful judgments will no longer apply.
It is important to understand that the old ways of managing no longer work. Organizational diagrams, communication systems, hierarchies, vertical management, the whole apparatus of command and control management techniques, no longer serve us in the present conditions.
Quality, change and competitiveness.
Competitiveness is today one of the outstanding characteristics within the business market of the entire world, for which the management methods should not be divorced or ignore the styles and management techniques that help us to be more competitive. It is important to have enough vision to glimpse the possible scenarios, which are highly changing, so that our organization can adapt, adjust and respond quickly to these changes.
The issue of competitiveness will continue to be the cornerstone for the survival of companies for years to come. Non-competitive organizations have no future and cannot continue in the market beyond the next 2-3 years. This means that natural selection is taking place in which only the most prepared will be able to survive.
Changes are constant and happening with increasing speed. Today's executive cannot wait for the stability of 20 years ago, he has to live forcibly in change. The decisions made today may not work tomorrow, and in this context, people's resistance to change is the great enemy of the company, which is forced to make whatever is necessary to adjust to the new conditions, be competitive and survive without any guarantee that more changes will emerge in the future to resolve the new competitive situations that arise.
The theme of resistance to change is the great negative force that opposes progress and endangers the future. In summary:
- Competitiveness Continuous changes Resistance to change,
These are the three elements that endanger the lives of the Companies, and that all management personnel must know, master and work with, giving primary attention in order to manage them in a timely and adequate manner.
But these issues are not just for management, they are issues of group conscience that must be faced by the entire working mass. The objective, today, is to improve and, tomorrow, to be a Company of Excellence, for which we all must unify our efforts for it.
The change may become so profound that it will go beyond the limits of a simple technical question. It will touch not only what our managers do but what they are. Not only their sense of the task and how to approach it, but their sense of themselves. Not only her way of seeing the world but her way of living in the world.
Management has the obligation to provide elements, tools, information, through training actions, so that every worker can understand the situation and collaborate to achieve a common goal: the future. The managers have to become educator leaders, trainers, trainers of their collaborators.
Today, many leaders and managers think that business is done with numbers (such as the “balance sheet”), or forces (such as “market forces”), or even flesh and blood (“our staff”). But seen coldly, in isolation and without the necessary integration it requires, it could turn into a mistake. First and foremost, business is made up of ideas; ideas, expressed in words and actions. As Fidel expressed on the occasion of a speech delivered in the Magna classroom of the Central University of Venezuela on February 3, 1999 "A revolution can only be the daughter of the culture of ideas."
Today's business world recognizes that the success of a Company depends on the way its human resources are treated, on how resistance to change is treated and on how to motivate and integrate staff in a project that they hope to achieve. Management must create hope, give confidence and motivate, create ideas and put them into practice.
The protagonists of the change are the organizations themselves and these are made up of people, so the secret lies in the proper treatment of human resources.
Nowadays, new organizational designs will always be necessary, a new philosophy, another way of managing organizations or configuring them, that allows and facilitates integrating people in a dynamic of change such as how to be competitive and survive. People are not, and cannot be, a taxable person for change; they are the instrument of change itself and according to their activities, behaviors, habits, customs, beliefs, interests and emotions they will be able to orient the Company more or less towards success.
In the case of the professional training of architects, engineers and other professional profiles, it is not common to handle these basic aspects, as they are not given a group of subjects that provide them with the basic knowledge on how to reorient attitudes and behaviors; for this reason, the new Business model, the new design and the new action of management is, without a doubt, the basic human formation (teaching how to change attitudes and organizational culture), which has been lacking in this education but without which cooperation that helps develop the competitiveness of a Company is not possible.
Values change with recognition of the person. Only the individual is capable of mastering the existing technology and creating new techniques and, in addition, generating the ideas that could revolutionize your Company.
The person is capable of conceiving ideas, making improvements, suggesting changes acting as a team. Thus, the idea of improvement groups, quality committees and quality circles is penetrating organizations, which, making a 180 ° turn with respect to the beginning of the century, now figure their success in the contributions and collaboration of workers.
People can plan, organize, cooperate, influencing their environment and their future. The first person interested in the Company continuing to move forward is the worker, who has ceased to be a taxable person, who waits to “see what happens”, to become an active subject who discusses, promotes improvements, seeks to save time, costs and quality improvement as a path to survival and development.
But in all this change of values is implicit a cultural change, a development of the mentality, a new learning and training for coordination, cooperation, teamwork, change of attitudes, motivations or perceptions.
The human factor today is the key, and the customer is the key to the business. Customer is one who repeats, is faithful, recommends acquaintances for the satisfaction of the product and the treatment received.
But there is another concept of client: the internal client, that is, the person to whom we deliver our work and who “buys” in some way the elements or services that we offer. But what items do you buy, under what conditions, in what condition? How is it treated, how are your expectations and needs understood?
It is unfair for a worker or a leader to bear the sad and unmotivating task of fixing things badly done by others; it is unfair that he dedicates his time (his life) to reviewing, looking for and solving errors that he has not committed that are the responsibility of his "internal salesman". It should be considered that each person buys / transforms / sells, and thus the customer-seller chain is established within the Company.
A new concept of property is created: "I, the buyer, do not want to accept bad work done by others", "I have a right to it". "My work is my own Company and I cannot afford to waste time reviewing, controlling or fixing what another colleague gives me." (Everyone cannot allow himself to do something that is not right!).
But for all people in the Company to be integrated into these ideas, it is necessary to have extensive training, at all levels, by which every worker or leader knows and interprets the role that corresponds to perfection, in the appropriate way to achieve success.
New functions, new attitudes, new values, are a change of culture in the Company that will take us into the coming years. Whoever does not understand and who does not put these ideas into practice has no future. The success lies, I repeat, in the new management of human resources, in the new training that prepares people for "knowing how to be" as well as for "knowing how", the only method to involve them all in the illusion of this Common Project from which we will all benefit, including of course, customers, integrated into a new management model thanks to which we all win.
Positive results derived from the application of a Quality System.
- Companies REPLACE their pragmatic approaches with more methodical ones. Greater FORMALIZATION and use of written information, more records and process controls. A Quality Policy defined, applied and evaluated, has a strong IMPACT ON INTERNAL TRAINING PROGRAMS, which It shows more concern to strengthen employee promotion plans and commits all members of the Organization. The implementation of a SC involves TEAMWORK that develops communication and cooperation between different areas and specialists. It increases bureaucracy, but it is a MORE FLEXIBLE BUREAUCRACY that helps the development and better development of the company. Companies that limit their objectives to stop the blow of competition,or simply obtaining the ISO certificate does not generate substantial social effects. Companies that have implemented SC tend to be more dynamic, transparent, capable of reacting in the short and long term, whose employees show greater professionalism, therefore more adapted and adaptable to the Today's changing world. The number of employees tends to increase slightly, changing their characteristics and qualifications.
Figures 1 to 3 show some of the main reasons for developing and implementing quality systems, the main difficulties, as well as the results derived from its implementation, based on studies and surveys carried out internationally over 2000 Business.
Some general comments.
It is important to note that various factors will be associated with the implementation of a Quality System, as well as with everything that generates an organizational change, which will prevent the obtaining of the proven benefits that will be derived from it. These tend to emanate to a high degree in people, whose wrong attitudes constitute the fundamental causes.
Here are some of the ones that the authors have had to face most frequently in the daily and daily practice of the part of their professional life dedicated to these tasks:
- Passivity among top executives and managers by not appreciating the benefits of the system or emphasizing only the necessary investments and implementation time. People who are satisfied with the progress of events do not understand or visualize the problems; They are satisfied with their status quo. Self-centered people who consider themselves the "best", the "wise", transmitting this erroneous feeling to the image of the organization. Those who think that the best and easiest way to do something is the one that they know and have always applied; that is, they only trust their own insufficient experience. People who are not able to work as a Team and only want to excel, always thinking of themselves. Discouragement, jealousy, envy, distrust of results, impatience.People with a lack of strategic vision, who are not able to appreciate what happens or can happen not only in their immediate environment, but beyond it. They do not have any information on how the world evolves and is expected to evolve. People who continue to live in the past, with the technical knowledge inherent only in the specific professional activity for which they were trained and in which they have carried out their work activities The commitment contracted with "others", not with the System. Lack of support from the top management, even when it expresses its desire to implement the System. Do not start with education, continue with education and end with education. Time limits set. Everything very fast. Lack of knowledge about the inherent needs to implement a SC. The goals,especially the emotional "short goals", not well founded on the knowledge of what is going to be done.
In order to clear these erroneous attitudes, it is necessary to apply many of the concepts and techniques that could be summarized as: firm convictions, spirit of cooperation, enthusiastic spirit of pioneer, desire to achieve important advances for the organization, confidence, patience and ability to persevere and, finally, good tactics and strategies to overcome difficulties.
Conclusions
1. The work presented may contribute favorably to disseminating the main results obtained worldwide in relation to the development and implementation of quality management systems, and internalize what it means to work focused on this in order to increase the competitiveness of the organization.
2. It will capture the attention of the top management of the organization and all its workers, as well as incentivize, motivate and stimulate them for the design, implementation and active and conscious application of their own Quality Management System.
