What is Management Quality?Practically all management development is aimed at individuals. Management Quality is an organizational concept,
which describes the organization’s capacity to meet high quality objectives in its management functions. This leads to better customer satisfaction and financial and other performance. Many enterprises and organizations have programs for Total Quality Management. These are supposed to cover management quality, as one of several topics. In practice, however, improvements in this area are often given a lower priority, than within processes, more directly concerning flows of products and money.
To apply quality concepts and methods to the area of management includes measuring present level of quality, establishing the desired goal and necessary actions, and finally measuring progress. It is not sufficient to address the symptoms, the obvious deficiencies; you must also consider the fundamental values, policies, systems, processes and programs, i.e. quality assurance.Management quality is not synonymous with Quality management (to manage quality improvement). Nor is it synonymous with Quality of managers (a narrower concept, often represented as “wish lists” of desired personality traits).
Is Management Quality really important?All enterprises or other organizations with competition and/or pressure to reduce costs must find means to improvement, that continuously give customers, clients and other stake holders more value for money. The most common way is to simply cut costs, which directly hits the employees and indirectly the customers.In the area of management there is a great, unexploited area for improvement. Such improvement has a direct and positive impact on results. Those organizations that are pioneers in using this opportunity will create greater value for customers and clients, a better working environment and competitive advantage.There are no real arguments for not taking advantage of this opportunity.
Management Quality – is there need for improvement?Consider the following illustrations as “evidence”:
Evidence 1. I have conducted benchmarking studies in more than 10 major Nordic and multinational organizations representing industry, commerce and government. On a 1000-point scale for management quality these enterprises end up in the 350-550 interval. The study includes companies with an excellent reputation in the areas of general management and human resource management. The conclusion is that even those that are considered leading edge today have substantial room for improvement -and there are thousands who are lagging far behind.
Evidence 2. Ask any group of employees if, during the last year, they have observed examples of lacking management quality, which have directly and negatively impacted the performance of the organization. Almost all hands come up.
Then ask how many who, during the last three months, personally have had such negative experiences, resulting in decreased motivation or possibility to do a first rate job. About half the group will confirm this.
Evidence 3. Consulting companies have conducted studies, reported in the press, indicating that variations in management quality result in productivity differences as high as 25 %.
Evidence 4. Other calculations show that the value of good management quality, as compared to poor quality, is 1,8 MUSD per year in a marketing group of 10 people. Corresponding numbers for a manufacturing group is 0,3 MUSD annually, and for an administrative group 0,2 MUSD.
Evidence 5. In hundreds of interviews with employees and managers I hear statements like:
“Personnel policy is non-existent in this division. I am not making an effort anymore”
“Decisions are taken and orders are given, but everyone does whatever he likes to do. There is no follow-up, no questions asked.”
“You cannot trust top management. Decisions are often reversed, without explanation. I am not motivated to act strongly and promptly”, said one manager.
Each of these and many other statements are real-life examples of the negative impact on business of poor management quality.