From Kaoru Ishikawa, quality has to do with the "ability of an organization to adapt to the requirements of its users", this apparently elemental approach has currently generated profound changes in the management approaches of the organization where the organization has passed from focusing on the product to focusing on the customer.
Other changes that have brought the quality models to corporate management have to do with the fact that they propose information as a vital resource of the organization to adapt to the market and establish the need for participation, to have human capital, their knowledge and their contributions to generate continuous improvement.
In this sense, communication becomes an indispensable facilitator of this adaptation management, where a structure must be provided for the appropriate flow of information ascending from the client, horizontal between the areas.
The 3 key communication actions for quality…
The 3 key communication actions for quality
- Communication to support the quality culture
The quality models try to change the management model of the industrial era where the typically descending information discards the attention of the client's requirements and puts the specialization of the work that the Weberian models put before the required coordination between the areas.
The well-known Weberian model that divided the processes to specialize them and thus make them more efficient, the only thing it did was interrupt the flow of information from organizations.
For this reason today, when that flow is the vital competitive sense of the organization, the organizational structures are shaken looking for new paths.
The specialization of the work by departments isolated the parts of the process, that is why today communication is the fundamental tool for the reduction of time and errors and for the global understanding of the process.
Work flow
Communication is the pillar of the operation of quality, it must be an innovative agent by providing the elements for the improvement of processes and a channel for information, input of information and new ideas that make the secretariat of finance a model entity in the satisfaction of its users.
The transition from the traditional Taylorist model to the quality model requires several fundamental changes in the beliefs and culture of the organization:
- Rooting the culture of the need to adapt to customer expectations. Prioritizing information for improvement. Knowledge must be implemented against punishment. Collaborators can make proposals for improvement.
The communications department must support the development and roots of the new culture either through media campaigns to make quality a culture in the organization, a philosophy of quality.
For the development of the new culture, the organization must have a communications scheme that allows the reinforcement of values through internal means and through campaigns that show the benefit of working under quality systems.
These media and campaigns must be visible in the places of greatest internal impact of the organization, they must be periodic and they must facilitate the general understanding of the collaborators of the organization.
In this sense, the communication of an organization committed to quality must ensure:
- Make the information of the user ascend in the administrative structures to achieve a balance between the obligations of the citizen and the requirements of the latter to fulfill them. Achieve that the information reaches each and every one of the directions generating better service processes. Generate innovative interactions between the directorates to adjust processes and avoid both reprocessing and waste of resources (time, etc.) and even trying to develop synergies between the directorates. Seek that the address from the secretary's office reaches each and every one of the collaborators of the organization generating management dynamics appropriate to public requirements.
Non-conformities: Non-conformities in this regard generally refer to the fact that during the evaluation processes the interviewed workers are unaware of the development of quality policies or their effect on the processes.
Workers are unaware of the organization's strategic objectives, mission, vision, or policies.
- Communication as a structural support to quality processes.
Provide communication tools and structures to strengthen continuous improvement processes.
Primary groups
Improvement logs, etc.
Fundamental principles
- Obtaining information on consumer satisfaction. Making user information flow within the organization so that it adapts through continuous improvement. Communication for management optimization.
Kaizen
DIALOGUE COMMUNICATION WITH THE CLIENT
For quality systems, the most valuable information is that offered by the client or user, such information must be channeled, cataloged and recorded in the decision-making areas of the organization.
The QRS history (Complaints, claims and suggestions) as well as the information obtained in the communication channels that the organization must establish to establish two-way relationships with its user will be a reference for this exercise.
- Non-conformities: Non-conformities in this regard refer, among other situations, to: The organization does not have channels to obtain customer complaints, claims or suggestions. The organization has not developed a system to tabulate QRSs, or to be able to keep a record of them. The organization has a QRS system, but its responses are late or ineffective. Requests made by the client through the channels provided by the organization find no response in the organization. Public communication and the crisis of the nation state, between democracy and service. Today's citizen is not the same as the middle of the last century
Differences table:
| Before | After |
| It adjusts to the requirements of the social mass | He seeks the satisfaction of his individual needs and wishes to be recognized as an independent individual. |
| It makes rows | Look for alternatives in payment mechanisms (Internet, telephone, bank exchanges, etc.) |
| Try to become an expert in red tape | Look for simple processes that facilitate interaction with the organization. |
| You must undergo the procedures that the organization establishes to interact with it. | Looking for your personal comfort (friendly places, good treatment) |
| Public organizations are deaf transmitters of information. | Looking for dialogue communication, looking for a personal and human contact within the organization that listens to you and gives individual value to what you want to solve. |
Today's citizen has stopped seeing the public institution as a provider parent and views it as a service entity for society.
In this sense, it is demanding in processes and service expectations that, if not met, will seek to be replaced by a private model.
DIALOGUE COMMUNICATION BETWEEN THE MANAGEMENT LEVEL AND THE COLLABORATORS.
This is a fundamental element of management given that strategic targeting and the support of a quality culture depend on these types of channels.
This point refers to business breakfasts, semi-annual meetings or other types of methodologies such as:
Open door policy: That any member of the organization can dialogue with the directors of the organization and make proposals or suggestions.
Street management: That the management level visit the operating facilities and meet with the operators with some regularity.
Hot leadership: That the manager occasionally personally attends clients at the service points.
Nonconformities:
Latent announcement by employees of managerial absence. (They do not know who is the highest executive in the organization or they do not know how the executive fraud is made up.)
The manager does not know the facilities that the company has.
A period of 6 months is exceeded in which the manager has not visited the company's facilities and therefore runs the risk of ignoring the practical application of his decisions.
COMMUNICATION BETWEEN AREAS
Continual improvement requires not only obtaining information from customers, it also requires adapting the organization to these requirements and for this it needs strengthening communication between areas and work teams. Kaizen refers to this as "cross-functional communication."
This type of exercise is based on debugging processes and making them consistent with the expectations that customers have about the services or processes of the organization.
In this sense, the work of “Interfunctional Teams”, “Improvement Meetings”, “Quality Logs”, etc. is common.
The cross-functional teams are made up of people from different areas and their purpose is to focus the organization's processes towards a certain work unit or project, reducing waste and errors of congruence between the areas.
Improvement meetings, on the other hand, are generally meetings of only two areas where mutual collaboration is sought to reduce errors and establish production improvements (times, efforts, development of synergies, etc.)
Finally, the quality logs are records of requests that one area makes to another to improve a certain procedure and thereby optimize the work being done. There one area makes a request to another and that other must offer a response to know if it is possible to make the change or how what the requesting area requested can be achieved.
WHAT ARE AND WHY ARE INTERFUNCTIONAL BARRIERS PRESENTED?
In the long run, the problems of the organizations are presented by communication failures that appear between the parts of the process. How to identify and solve them?
Communication as a factor that eliminates interfunctional barriers, unites the organization by speeding up processes by making them more efficient and productive.
More frequent nonconformities:
- Not having an evaluation system on inter-functional barriers or communication between the areas. Not having mechanisms that allow communication between the areas at a particular level. That is, from one area specifically to another.
INTERNAL SUGGESTION SYSTEM
This type of mechanism should be focused on reducing management uncertainties and be a channel of expression for workers towards the direction of the organization. They can establish questions and disagreements and it is a great support not only for internal communication but for the climate of the organization.
It is generally the non-existence of this type of channel that deteriorates the working climate and that occasionally and in extreme situations develops shock conflicts (taking of installations, protests, work stoppages, etc.).
More frequent nonconformities:
- There are no channels of expression of the organization's collaborators towards human management, communications or the managerial level. The channel exists but it is notoriously discredited for its inoperation. (It does not offer answers to the requirements of the workers).
COMMUNICATION WITH SUPPLIERS
The communication system with suppliers must include a policy where the rules of the game are established regarding the organization's requirements and adaptation needs.
Part of the exercise of adapting the organization to the expectations of its customers is to involve suppliers in this adaptation process, for this, not only good relationships are needed, but also a fluid information system that allows the supplier to maintain an adaptation dynamic. according to the organization facing the client.
The certification of the communication processes themselves
Quality processes are carried out under the commitment to "Improve continuously and forever", therefore the management of its construction and development is planned in cycles.
In a first cycle, which we could call "descriptive" we would then have:
- Establish communication objectives. Determine or describe the communication processes that are carried out at the time of implementation. Standardize them, that is, make a description that allows parts of it to be adjusted so that it can be repeated in the same way. Measure them and establish scales.. In this sense, it is necessary to have indicators that allow observing the behavior of the process.
In a second cycle, or "Improvement" cycle we would have:
- Establish a proposal to improve those already measured focusing on the user Establish new processes if necessary or implement improvement proposals Measure the effect by comparing the measurements of the descriptive cycle Present the improvement proposal for the next cycle
Communication for quality
In this way, the cycle of improvement of the communication processes begins, which must be reviewed not only by the executor but also by the certifiers who will be aware of the progress and improvements proposed.
Ishikawa, Kaoru. Total quality. Ed Norma.
Deming, Edward. The 14 Deming points. Rule.
Download the original file
