Passive Aggressive Management is Killing Quality

You’ve been told that quality is a strategic goal for the company but get confused when daily decisions often do not support it. You probably faced a similar situation at some point in your career. I guess it is safe to say that everyone with a particular working mileage met it at least once. When it comes to quality, even the strongest, confident CEO’s, have the potential to become passive-aggressive. They might be a true believer in the concept, yet not so conclusive when it’s time to act.

Here are the top3 symptoms for passive-aggressive management and the best way to deal with it in the workplace, if you want to make a difference.

Size & skills of the Quality team not aligned with organization needs

There are many reasons why the capabilities and capacity of the quality team and are not optimized for organization needs. But the most common one is management misperception of a quality role. Some CEO’s adopted a repeated mantra, and it goes like this: “Quality is Everyone responsibility.” But I doubt they are quoting W. Edwards Deming. More likely, it’s their way to justify the limited size and budget of the quality team. Sadly, it is often nothing more than an empty slogan. What will happen if you’ll approach ‘everyone’ and ask them to support or carry a quality-related task? ‘Everyone’ will agree that quality is essential. It’s just not in their goals or job description. You guess, right. Somehow on the way, your CEO “forget” to cascade-down his mantra in a structured manner.

How to deal with it:

A. Smile and sincerely agree with the bottom of your heart. Compliment your CEO for his /her sharp insights. Politely mention that you are sharing a similar opinion, and you glad your CEO is passionate about quality the same way you are.

B. Gently mention its worthwhile to align with other managers on ‘everyone’ Roles and Responsibilities in regards to Quality. Schedule dedicate meetings to discuss the aspects and contributions of ‘everyone’ for selected tasks.

C. Next, collaborate with every manager in your organization so ‘everyone’ will have quality-related goals, and they’ll be scored against the right metric.

D. Go back to your CEO to present the result of your work. There are a few possible outcomes. The best (but with lower odds) is that people fully collaborate with you. You succeed in creating a meaningful network of quality ambassadors – Congratulations! The other option (most likely) is that people tend not to collaborate. In this case, your CEO might intervene (than people will be “inspired” to volunteer – back to the first option). There is a third option that you will get the resourced you asked.

Quality team scope is less “signal” more “noise”

In theory, the quality team is expected to craft the culture and drive the entire organization toward improvement. In practice, management sees quality as an administrative function. The team is overload with firefighting and daily routine bureaucracy. Not only those time-consuming tasks are annoying, they carry no glory. A huge disconnect that brings with it a lot of frustration, and leaves you little time and resources (if at all) to engage in a meaningful activity.

How to deal with it:

A. Create a vision for your team, one that captures the essence of quality as you see it in your mind. Then, map the team current scope of work and activities versus the optimal situation drafted in your vision.

B. If you encounter difficulties to create a vision, try reaching out to your colleagues and ask them for their expectations from Quality. In the best case scenario, your colleagues’ perception of quality is pretty similar to yours meaning a proactive team with a greater influence on organization culture.

C. Once you have a full understanding of the actual scope of work versus the desired scope of work, start ‘buy-in’ with CEO and senior managers. Make sure you have at least one sponsor from senior management to support you. This part of the process is challenging. But, it’s a giant step in creating valuable, fully functioning and proactive quality team.

Quality is not part of “strategic” planning.

Every company owns a process of short and long-term strategic planning to ensure company growth. Your goal is to get involved in relevant sessions and activities and, more specifically, have quality part of the discussion. Sound simple, right? The only obstacle on your way is management misperception of quality. The good news: I earlier mentioned a few actionable steps. Successful execution might be your point of differentiation in branding the team and yourself as an influencer. Once you are “in,” it can be worthwhile to have a separate discussion on quality. For example, you can bring “quality 4.0” to the table (in this case, use this Quality 4.0 toolbox as a benchmark). It is aligned with industry 4.0 trend everyone discussing.

In conclusion, it does not matter how quality is currently positioned – this is old news. You have the ability within you to lead the entire organization. Shape quality perception and culture as you see it in your mind. Use your creative and innovative skills to carve a new route, different from the one you currently at.