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Total Quality Management
TQM has been widely used in manufacturing, education, government, and service industries, as well as NASA space and science programs. But how to define it in an authentic way? As defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO):
"Total Quality Management is a management approach for an organization, centered on quality, based on the participation of all its members and aiming at long-term success through customer satisfaction, and benefits to all members of the organization and to society." That makes a comprehensive definition and we shall investigate into it further down. Is an individual's life an organizational process or not? People make a mistake of treating it as an individual one. In fact, nothing is more organizational in nature than the life of an individual is. Hence a need for total quality management! Who are the members of this organization? All the others who s/he interacts with! What is its quality? The creativity of such interactions and the joy springing out of them! What is its long-term success through customer satisfaction? The health of its individuals - both physical and mental - along with growing comforts of life for all as well as an unconditional love amongst them! What are its benefits to all members of the organization and to society? An irresistible passion for life in all alike! Nowhere else is total quality management required as much as it is, in the process called life! But there is a difference. In life, total quality management is not to be a strategy but to be an attitude. If it is a strategy, it is bound to miserably fail and die its slow death - exactly as it did in the world of business organizations. And once it is made an attitude in life, it will automatically pass on to the business organizations as well. After all these are individuals only that make an organization! An organization with total quality management! Train individuals for the ATTITUDE and not for the STRATEGY of total quality management, and the organization will itself get trained in it as well will the organizational process too! Like honesty is not to be a policy (what to say of best!), but the only way I know to live! So please don't pollute my life with adages like 'honesty is the best policy'. But beware that the attitude toward quality does not turn into a mechanical compulsion to robot-like stick to the specifications that have already been defined in the strictest sense of them. Otherwise how will the process spiral into bigger and bigger diameters from its conventionally designed circle that it originally started with? And how will you develop into a creator enjoying with insight into a spiral (oh, it is not an ideal circle!) as compared with a perfectionist robot religiously determined to stick to the perfect circle only! Okay, what is the definition of management? The verb Manage comes from the Italian maneggiare (to handle - especially a horse), which in turn derives from the Latin manus (hand). Management is the act of directing and controlling a group of people for the purpose of coordinating and harmonizing the group towards accomplishing a goal beyond the scope of individual effort. Management encompasses the deployment and manipulation of human resources, financial resources, technological resources, and natural resources. Management can also refer to the person or people who perform the act of management. Now, is the act of directing and controlling a group of people for the purpose of coordinating and harmonizing the group towards accomplishing a goal beyond the scope of individual effort a spiral or a circular process? If the goal is strictly defined through doggedly getting attached to it without any scope or leeway for its enhancement during the process itself, management limits itself to be reduced to a circle only instead of being open to all the possibilities that an open spiral provides it with, on earth. There is no place for total quality management in it then. And is my goal different from the process I am implying in order to reach it? I am sorry then, I will never be able to reach it, howsoever-good tools of total quality management I apply to my process. How can I attain total world peace through a war even if it is the holiest of them all? We have a lot to manage in our life with an ever-growing list at our behest:
And this all with an attitude of total quality management! Which kind of management skills and what kind of management training do we require for all this? There are many courses available in various business schools awarding a business management degree at their successful completion. But they only teach how to manage business. They teach total quality management as a tool of business and not as a way of life. They never teach how to manage life. How can you manage your business if you can't manage your life well? How can you be a good business manager if you are not a good mother? They do not teach total quality management as an attitude in life for each and every single thing of it. The main drawback with these business courses is that they aren't able to develop an insight into management, rather they keep hogging on theories, jumping from one to another making it the fad of the time and using its jargon in order to fit the reality into it. How can such business be conducive to life? And how can such managers see beyond their immediate profits in their narrow business objectives? Our business schools are generating an army of swindlers who keep hatching conspiracies to show their competitors down. The better a manager at swindling, the fatter goes her/his pay packet! The only thing that goes poorer is the quality of life on the planet. And then we talk of total quality management! Poor we! Leadership and management go hand in hand. But we don't even know what leadership is. In the name of leadership we keep devising newer and newer ways to motivate an otherwise unmotivated workforce by showing them sometime this carrot and sometime that! We address their fears and their greed and grind our own axe in its aftermath! And we still talk of total quality management! We also equate leadership with aggressive marketing in order to achieve a high pitch sale, whether it yields value for money or not. We are proud of selling the combs to the bald! Our trainers have developed a lot many tips to be able to perform such miracles:
As if by going through the tips, we are going to be the specialists in the field! And we still have cheeks to talk of total quality management! Do we have a REAL way to come out of all this mess and all-this maze? Do you feel things should change in life, on earth? If yes, why sit passive? Let's be in the active vanguard. Let's try to change the world! Even trying is its own fun in itself! Have An Insightful Management Story To Tell About Your Management Skills In Office, At Home, Or In Life As Such?
A story lived by you!
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