Leadership, Management, and Total Quality: Key Concepts

Posted on Mar 16, 2025 in Business Administration and Innovation Management

The Temptations of a Leader

  • Arrogance
  • Egocentrism
  • The power for self-gratification

Participative vs. Authoritarian Leadership

  • Hierarchy based on power – personal power
  • Oriented Order – designed to manage and understand
  • People do things because they have to – people do things because they want to
  • People give time – people deliver time and energy
  • Yields normal results – people produce more than expected

Ways to Achieve Leadership

  • Work with clear and specific goals.
  • Leave your office and walk around. Get close to people and listen.
  • Train the people around you.
  • Have a builder mentality.
  • Educate yourself. Learn forever.

Management and Total Quality Management

Management: includes the activities necessary to achieve certain long-term objectives efficiently and economically.

Total Quality Management (TQM): is essentially a participative management philosophy. Its basic assumptions are:

  • Everyone thinks.
  • Everyone can contribute.
  • All should work together.

Deployment Concepts

The entity should be directed to the customers through products and services.

Participatory Management: Basic Points

  • Conviction
  • Consensus
  • Environment
  • Active participation of people
  • Persistence

The Human Dimension in TQM Objectives

  • Linking human development with the implementation of TQM.
  • Identify education and training as the basis for human development.
  • Recognize the importance of participatory management in the process of TQM.
  • Perceiving the need for change in the organization.

Operational Principles – Proposals

  • Guide provided by the needs of customers.
  • Transmit to each person in the organization the objectives to be achieved.
  • Do not tolerate mistakes, failures, poor attendance, and delays.
  • Always remember: what to do, where to do it, why to do it, when to do it, who should do it, and how.
  • Base relationships between departments and team members not only on facts but also on opinions.
  • Customers define the quality standards of products and services.
  • Continuously improve the understanding of processes.
  • Always aim higher.
  • Direct staff training towards achieved/desired results.
  • Establish and encourage a climate of trust.
  • Create a supportive infrastructure: obstacles presented by habits and lack of time must be technically and administratively removed.
  • Disseminate and encourage the use of the PDCA cycle as a management tool by managers.

The PDCA Cycle

  • P – Planning: Every action should be planned in a participatory manner so that the plan requires the commitment of all.
  • D – Execution: Execute the tasks as they are in the plan and collect data for verification of the process.
  • C – Verification: Compare data collected during execution with the planned target achieved.
  • A – Corrective Action: Implement corrections when any problems are discovered during the verification stage.

Quality Control Circles (CC) and the Process

  • This consists of a small number of employees in the same workspace and their supervisor, who meet regularly to consider improvements in quality control techniques.

Total Quality – Objective

To get high-quality products and services. Other objectives are:

  • Increased productivity.
  • Cost reduction.
  • Reduced delivery time.
  • Expansion of sales.
  • Assured quality.

Organization of Quality Control Circles

  • All members must work in the same work area.
  • Members work with the same supervisor, who is part of the circle.
  • CC members must meet at least once a week.
  • CC members choose the issues on which they wish to work.
  • The information and prepared solutions are presented to managers and other technicians.
  • Members and management assess the effectiveness of the solution.

Report of Points to Consider at the Meeting in Quality Control Circles

  • Draw up a list of problems.
  • Analyze the list and set priorities.
  • Discriminate parts of the priority problem found.
  • Seek alternative solutions.
  • Choose the alternative to be used.
  • Distribute responsibilities or tasks to each member of the circle.
  • Establish a strategy and timetable of tasks.
  • Present results according to the responsibility of each and the schedule.
  • Discuss the solution found to the problem with each of the members of the circle.