The mysterious concept of quality

Again and again, often in various meetings with different people – among amateurs and among quality experts – there are lengthy discussions about the definition and substance of the quality concept.

Everyone can understand quality without explanations or formal definitions. Quality is a much used word in general everyday language. When something is associated with quality it is purpose to bring out positive features incorporated with that. Quality is a concept of good and success. However, if you will analyze the concept in details what does it include strictly speaking in different situations, it comes out a very wide range of viewpoints. This multi-mindedness is a self-contained character of the quality concept.

A variety of approaches to the definitions of quality concept may be grouped as follows although the different groups do not cross clearly or sharply:

1. Definitions based on product characteristics
Quality means measurable properties of a product. Quality means speed, efficiency, gold content, economy/business class, etc. Difference in quality depends on differences in these characteristics. Quality may be examined objectively. Such a concept of quality is often associated with price and cost, so that better quality means higher cost. For the same reason, a high price can be justified by the quality of the product. In this way the quality concept is often understood by the marketing people.

2. Definitions based on production performance
Quality is fulfillment of the specified requirements. This definition has been used in traditional quality engineering, which has its roots strongly in the manufacture of material products and prevention of manufacturing defects. Quality means the degree in which the product meets the design and manufacturing or contractual requirements. Quality is an objectively and unambiguously measurable quantity. It is expressed as a rate of nonconforming units or rate of number of nonconformities and managed by statistical process control. Operating target for the production is an acceptable quality limit, AQL, or zero defect level. Quality costs due to defects can be avoided only by doing everything right first time.

3. Monetary (financial) value based definitions
Quality is the use-value (utility) of an object. It is a measure of the relative satisfaction from the use of a product in fulfilling somebody’s needs. In this case, quality of the product is in connection with the added-value created by the producer. In classic free-market economic equilibrium, added-value corresponds to the exchange-value (the purchase price). Quality describes the ratio of use-value to price.

4. Real economy value based definitions
Quality of an item equals the real experienced and perceived benefit or advantage obtained by its user - even during its entire lifetime - regardless of what is paid (i.e. what is its exchange-value) and how much added-value it represents. E.g. quality in a human service may be achieved by right attitude of the service personnel without any additional cost. According to this definition, quality is an item's ability to meet the user's genuine - even implied - needs and expectations. Quality of a product traces back to the producer’s and the user’s needs and, therefore, it is always a subjective and also time-varying concept. Quality can only subjectively be assessed. Quality does not necessarily imply high costs of production. Quality is based on producer’s excellence in skills and customer-centered activity and by delighting each customer individually.

5. Philosophical and mythical definitions
Quality is of excellent goodness or luxury. Quality can not be measured or not even defined explicitly. You know what it is. Quality is based on the Platonic ideas. Love is the archetype of all quality considerations. Such a quality is the establishment of idealistic philosophy. In this way, the quality concept is also brought up a lot in advertising and the activities of "excellence" organizations. The quality is of reasserted superiority.

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The multi-mindedness is included in the nature of the quality concept. Quality can not be forced into a single inflexible definition framework. Quality is always what you want it to be although this may also cause confusions or problems.

However, quality is also one of the basic concepts of business, production and marketing. For this reason, it is justified to have the international standard definition published in the ISO 9000 standard: Quality = ”degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfills needs and expectations”. This definition reflects the practice and the multi-minded character of the concept.

In business context it is appropriate that the quality concept is understood in such a way that will support the organization's business objectives. In this case, quality should be attached to the company's products (goods and services) in a positive way. It is also often necessary to demonstrate quality undisputedly to organization’s customers or other stakeholders. Quality has a strong impact to customers' satisfaction. This can be achieved in a low-cost and competitive manner, when the company manages properly the production and product-related business processes and activities, i.e. the company's quality management is effective and efficient. Just in the same way it can be argued in public and third sector organizations.

Integrated quality approach in business networks

Organizations have many different kinds of stakeholders that operate as networks. Networks include customer network(s), partner networks (out-sourcing, crowd-sourcing networks), supplier networks and networks with other business stakeholders.

Among different kinds of organizations there are networks of regional operators and business clusters that should also be taken into account in business planning of individual organization. Also competitors are members of these networks.

People of organizations operate in networks internally and and are involved with external networks, e.g. expert networks and science communities.

In addition to the the closely business-activity related networks organizations’ people are involved with “free” networked communities. According to Einstein "A person starts to live when he can live outside himself". Etienne Wenger defined a concept of “Community of practice” that may be understood as a network of “ProAms” consisting of both professionals and amateurs. Similar networked communities are:

• Community of interest
• Community of action
• Community of context
• Communities of circumstance
• Communities of position
• Communities of purpose

Business communities of all organizations include many different kinds of actors in networks:

• Companies or organizations (private, public or not-for-profit)
• Corporate-internal business units, competence centers
• Individuals, e.g. experts or business managers

Factually, very often organizations’ stakeholders’ networks are not genuine networks but various kinds of organizational extensions or even ”slave networks”. Genuine business networks are primarily unplanned, emergent systems. Their growth is sporadic and self-organizing. A network member’s role can be characterized by centrality in the network as described by concepts activity, betweenness, and closeness (Valdis Krebs). Genuine network members are independent actors. The network as a whole is managed by nobody but each actor has its own characteristic impact in the network

• Access = actor’s easiness getting to the resources of the network
• Reach = actor’s potential wielding influence in the network
• Control = actor’s ability to control over the resources of the network

Relationships phenomena and transactions costs are significant aspects in understanding the formulation and operation of business networks. Interesting and and even still very relevant classical references are Maurice Dobb (1925) and Roland Coase (1937).

According to Dobb there are relations of the person with the rest of the world outside his immediate sphere. He busies himself with the division of labour inside the organization and he plans and organises consciously, but he is related to the much larger economic environment, of which he himself is merely one specialised unit. Here, he plays his part as a single ceIl in a larger organism, mainly unconscious of the wider role he fills.

Coase explaned in his study that firms are entities endogenous to the economic system and whose existence is justified only in the presence of transactions costs to production. Firms and other economic organizations and institutions, exist because people use them as a way to minimize transaction costs

Strong network actors (hubs) keep a network alive, and quality of the network facilitates its growth. Networks compete with each other and one with highest quality wins. Individual actors or small entities may sporadically (according their own decisions) liberate from or join with the network. A network is however robust, and particularly strong hubs keep it together.

It is network member’s own responsibility to keep actively him/her as a network member otherwise he/she drops out of the network. To be successful brand yourself and sell your value on the network.

Business environments and concepts have changed radically in networked businesses. That includes crucial changes e.g. in the following key concepts of business management:

• Organizing the business, the business system
• Business environments and its behaviour
• Stakeholders
• Business models, performance and targets
• Management and leadership
• Technology
• Products (goods and services)
• Business processes
• Work, employeeship
• Custom, customers
• Business culture

Professional business integrated quality management approaches that consist of:

• Quality management concepts and principles
• Quality management and quality assurance
• Frameworks (ISO 9000 standards and performance excellence models)
• Quality methodology
• Quality expertise

are very closely related to the above mentioned business management aspects. Therefore traditional professional quality management approaches are not appropriate within networked business environments without innovations. Network quality may not be achieved by traditional quality management means.

Quality of a business (or any) network is based on multiple win / win. Quality of a network may be defined according to the general ISO 9000 definition of the concept quality. According to this basis quality of a network means: “degree to which a set of inherent characteristics of the network fulfils needs and expectations of the involved network members”

All network members have their own needs and expectations and they produce something to and get something from the other network members. Network members may get benefits from the whole network, i.e. from its members. Quality of a network may be calculated based on this situation according to the mathematical formula in the following figure:
This is also according to Metcalfe’s Law: A network increases in value as the square of the numbers of its users.

A genuine network, so called scale-free network, follows mathematically a power law (see the following figure) that means that:

• A network grows one by one node.
• A new node is easier linked with a node with many existing links. This power law is also same as the Pareto principle (80/20 principle: 80% of the links are connected to 20% of the nodes)
  

A slogan that describes a scale-free network says: “Rich get richer”.

The most significant factors for influencing in and getting influences from a network are power and authority in relationships, and effectiveness of communication Paradox of real networks include gaps between private / public and politics / ethics. In a real life politics always overcome ethics.

Benefits of networking relate particularly to new information, knowledge and learning. That is most importatnt for organizations for operational management and strategic regeration.

Learning process is sped up and made more effective through participation in collaborative networks. In fact, best learning and 80% of all learning takes place informally in networks.

(Mid-summer in the archipelago of the city of Salo - Our summerplace)

Learning for transforming quality management

Organizations developing their quality management approaches are confronted with challenges of modern rapidly changing and turbulent business enviroments. That impacts on basic concepts and general principles of quality management and quality assurance, organizational quality realizing infrastructures, and applicable managerial tools. There is not very much help of the traditional quality management practices or standards. What should be done?

I have used in my training courses an excersice to define an initiative for transforming an organization's quality management approach as a project to carry out most immediate and necessary measures in order to enhance your organization's business effectiveness and efficiency. In order to promote the use of modern social technology, the task is presented in a blog in Internet and the student teams are creating their solutions also in their own blog.

International standardization for quality management - The concensus nature of the standards

The work with the fourth generation of ISO 9000 basic standards is approaching its end and results: The new ISO 9001 was published in 2008 and ISO 9004 will be published in 2009. Now it is again time to look at the results. One cannot be completely happy about the achievements (See my previous blog). However we should also try to understand the situation in order be able to apply the standards in the most beneficial way.

Problems related to understanding and applying standards are often caused by the nature of standardization efforts and process themselves. It seems almost impossible that people who have not participated in drafting up standards would be able to understand their real nature.

The core feature of standardization process is consensus approach (shared approval). Everyone involved in the said activity has the opportunity to voice his or her opinion and all opinions should also be taken into account. This has its benefits (+) and drawbacks (-):

+ Broad acceptance and distribution of the texts
+ Extensive expertise in preparing and commenting the standards
+ Global commitment
+ There are – at least in principle – no restrictions for innovative implementation

- “The mob has many heads but no brains”
- Only communally interesting issues are accepted to the final texts
- Only trivial means to implement the standard clauses may be considered in the standards
- Handling of the issues in the standard text is superficial
- It is hard to really understand the standards without participating their drafting
 
The most important consensus practices applied in this kind of standardization work are: (a) Someone’s proposal is accepted (b) A commonly acceptable text is edited in order to get consensus (c) 'Competing' alternatives are included in the standard although they may be contradictory and therefore confusing and (d) Disputed issues are not mentioned at all in the standard. Users of standards must be aware of these approaches, as possible problems caused by deficiencies in them should be avoided when implementing them. They must supplement the missing issues and rectify the inaccuracies and ambiguities.

Two worlds meet in the international standards, i.e. the world of standardization based on consensus principle and the world of the applying standards in an organization based on innovation (see the figure)

The consensus text of a standard represents mediocrity but its wisdom is entailed in the fact that the issues to which it points attract one’s attention to certain important issues. Then implementation of those issues may be innovative according to the real business requirements. This applies especially to understanding the central principles of the subject matter, and using effective and efficient tools and infrastructure for implementation.

In the consensus text all issues are not visible. Those that are, should be understood as advisory guidelines in the organization-specific application of the issues in question. The reality of the organization’s business calls for solutions to the superior implementation of issues brought to light by the standard.

The clauses of the standards can be applied creatively both in the domains of QM (ISO 9004) and QA (ISO 9001).

Otto von Bismarck: "People who appreciate laws and sausages have never seen how they are produced.” This view can be expanded to cover also tbe ISO 9000 standards.

(Reference: Anttila, J., Vakkuri, J.: ISO 9000 for the creative leader)

Understanding current challenges of quality profession

As professional experts we ought to recognize continuously needs for development, renovation and transformation within our profession in order to preserve its effectiveness, competence and attractiveness to exist and to serve the society by responding to its current requirements and challenges.

We have had almost one hundred years development in the modern type of professional quality principles, methodologies, and practices. Success of the discipline has primarily based on brilliant thinkers and persistent, brave and unprejudiced appliers. In the end this is a people issue.

Responsible professionals of the field are interested in looking and planning for future challenges both in general and from their own particular interests. In reflecting this one should be clearly aware of the facts of current situation and how we have entered this situation.

Having a protracked active involvement with professional quality thinking and applications one is able to consider the present “Now” situation in the development perspective. Factually, there are always three temporal dimensions in the present moment “Now”:

• The ‘Now’ of future events and performance
• The ‘Now’ of present events and performance
• The ‘Now’ of past events and performance

The present “Now” always includes the impacts of the past events and the pressure / challenges of the future events.

Things are always seen and understood by individuals. Practical things are singular, not general. Knowledge cannot be objective. Objectivity is theoretical generalizing real things. Knowledge makes us possible to act in a new meaningful way. Knowledge is genuine only if it can be tried and justified in operation.

Everybody has his / her own tacit knowledge of experience, background, bias, and interests when selecting items to be addressed and making observations for getting and understanding facts.

I have considered the current situation of the quality discipline in a previous blog-post, “There are serious problems in the prevailing quality management approaches”. I don’t feel the situation satisfactory. In fact, the quality profession is in a serious crisis. We should have something radically new based on new innovations in the field.

This year’s Future Study ”The old boundaries have been obliterated” of the ASQ has also emphasized the need of change in our profession. Their preferred scenario proposes Global adaptation: Evolution toward a synergistic society. This is a big challenge to the prevailing quality approach. We should also reconsider the whole concept of quality taking into account the large global and societal perspectives.

Individuals influence according their inherent networking capabilities and power through their relationships (Ref. e.g. Valdis Krebs). Distribution of ideas is promoted by the evidence of practical applications and result thereof. However, fundamentally adopting new ides is a cultural issue within organizations, communities, societies, etc. (see the figure later).

When planning for the future in rapidly changing environments we should get radical transformations happen into our operations in increasing pace. One way to understand this is that we should move in our time-thinking from the khronos (time as a physical entity) to kairos (time as a personal challenge) (Ref. Christian Mayeur).

Kairos is a non-linear challenge to proactive development-decisions. In today’s situation this requires a broad and multi-disciplinary collaboration among experts and non-experts. Networks with relational ”hyperlinks” may break linear time concept (khronos) and open ways to new multidimensional and nonlinear quality of time (kairos): This makes it possible to operate at this moment and context so that our human reality and unlimited creative omnipotentials meet. Life becomes an interactive experience and coexistence of paradoxical things and events and insoluble problems (oxymoron) from where unlimited creativity may liberate.

Development takes place within different scopes (see figure).
At all these levels the developments are unique. Although these different areas interact it is difficult to liberate from the burden of the existing cultures and behavior. Experts and expert organizations may act as mediators for border-breaking development and even for solving acute crises and conflicts. It is only a question of will and collaboration (Ref. Nobel Awarded Martti Ahtisaari: Nobel lecture text, Nobel lecture video). The will includes that they should start with strategic development plans for themselves.

Qua Vadis quality management standardization?

International committee ISO/TC 176 is responsible organization for the general standardization in the field of quality management. That committee has defined in 2001 a long term strategic plan for the quality management standardization in document “Horizon 2010”. That consists of vision, goals, and strategic intents and strategies.

The whole international standards family of quality management consists of many different kinds of documents prepared by the ISO/TC 176 committee and some other sector specific standardization committees. Now the fourth generation of the ISO 9000 standards is under preparation consisting of amendment of ISO 9001 and revision of ISO 9004

• Amending ISO 9001, “Quality management systems – Requirements” includes only very few minor changes in the text.
• Revising ISO 9004, “Managing for sustainable success – A quality management approach” is a complete rewriting the whole standard in the form of general guidance.

The new ISO 9001 will be published in 2008 and ISO 9004 in 2009. Now draft documents are available.

Although the situation seems to be reasonably good in general and the basic ISO 9000 standardization (ISO 9001 and ISO 9004 standards) have had an enormous impact on the development of quality practices globally, this has not taken place without problems and drawbacks:

• There is stagnation in the development of the ISO 9001 standard. Factually there has been no essential development during the recent 20 years in the standard and no remarkable change is expected during the next 10 years. However, organizational business environments and communities are changing at increasing pace.
• Standard ISO 9004 is too general, vague, and customary and therefore hardly can provide practical guidance or support for organizations’ performance development. There are better other literature and reference material available for this purpose. Assessment model in the new draft standard is theoretical and does not reflect the needs of organizations. It cannot compete with the recognized performance excellence models (quality awards criteria).
• ISO 9000 standardization process is too slow and poorly managed and cannot follow the general development and trends of business environments and society at large.
• Standardization bodies have weak means to control or support the use of the standards. The use of the standards is directed strongly by commercial consulting / certification business but not by genuine business needs.

When we started the ongoing work with the next generation of the ISO 9000 standards we had a strong enthusiasm – at least with the ISO 9004 standard – to develop something different from earlier but later it proved that that was not possible with the existing standardization practices.

In spite of this harmful development in the standardization, however, organizations have all possibilities to get maximum benefits in their realizing ISO 9000 standards with their own proactive activities by:

1. Understanding the ultimate purposes of the ISO 9000 standards.
2. Avoiding the known problems of ISO 9000 applications, and quality realizations in general.
3. Liberating themselves from the enslaving formalism of the standards documents and consultants / certifiers.
4. Taking into account the genuine needs, expectations and environments of the business in question.
5. Applying also all other beneficial references with the ISO 9000 standards. A good way to start to use the ISO 9000 standards is to carry out self-assessment based on some recognized performance excellence model.
6. Challenging to the future by recognizing the weak signals in the standardization in a multi-faceted way.

There are serious problems in the prevailing quality management approaches

There are plenty of cases where established organizational quality management approaches don’t respond to the real needs of the organizations

• Business management is not involved / committed – Quality is only a specialist issue.
• Communication between business managers and quality experts is not effective.
• Quality initiatives are superficial. – Typical distinct quality (management) systems are not business-centred. There are too much copied solutions without innovations. Diversity in quality realizations is endangered.
• People don’t understand – not even experts – difference between the basic concepts of quality management (QM = organization-internal quality of management for excellence) and quality assurance (QA = external communication with stakeholders for confidence).
• There are many different, distinct, and competing quality methodologies on which even quality experts don’t share the same opinions.
• There are many other specialized managerial initiatives competing with quality development.
• Quality initiatives in organizations are certification-emphasized, not for enhancing real business performance. Certification is commercialized and lost its credibility.
• Formal documentation is highlighted instead of a comprehensive management and application of business information and knowledge.
• Too often quality related actions are only reactive and there are very little proactive innovations in the field of quality.
• Quality implementations don’t take effectively into account realities of the modern business environments that relate to the aspects of time, speed, agility, networking, complexity, tacit knowledge, and informal learning and innovation.

In very many cases quality development has not redeemed its promises indisputably.

Are there really any new innovations created for organizations' quality development after Deming, Ichikawa, and Juran? Is the quality profession not able to follow the general development of organizations' business development and trends of the society at large (see figure)? Is it only "Plus ca change, plus c'est la même chose “?

One may recognize the needs for change also through some factual signals:

• There is an expanding critical discussion about the prevalent approaches of quality discipline.
• There are many cases of coping and feeling satisfactory with certain theories, principles, techniques, methodology, etc. that are being tried / used distinctly (“one-leg approach”) and with risks (trepidation), e.g. related to ISO 9000, EFQM or SixSigma.
• There are some new (ad hoc) initiatives also in the quality management standardization (ISO TC 176) presenting business integrated development of quality management.

New principles, tools, and infrastructures are necessary for quality management to take into account modern changed business environments. This includes new crystallized understanding of the foundations and aims of quality profession and integrated approach with multifarious means (“multi-leg approach”).

In practice the new way to organizational quality realizations consists of three key aspects:

1. Integration: Organizations implement effective / efficient and business-relevant quality principles and methodology embedded within their normal business management activities for both strategic management and operational management. Conceptually this means change from quality management (management of quality) to quality of management.
2. Responsiveness: Organizations enhancing abilities to adjust quickly to suddenly altered external conditions, and to resume stable operation without undue delay that is based on dynamic and flexible business management.
3. Innovation: All quality realizations are organization-dedicated solutions. There is no single solution to organizations’ challenges. Organizations strive continuously for new organization-dedicated innovative and unique approaches. Multiple different choices for quality management are encouraged in competitive business environments. That especially emphasizes change from standard approach to organization’s own unique approach.

Carry out appropriate surveys, questionnaires, evaluations, etc. and use advanced on-line web tool

Surveys, questionnaires, evaluations, etc. are very essential activities in all quality integration realizations. They are needed for both operational and strategic management purposes. They may be comprehensive covering organizational entities as a whole or they may be focused on very detailed aspects only (see and click the following figure). Different evaluations are always a part of organizational development.

Key aspects of beneficial evaluation approaches are the appropriateness of questioning phraseology and the technique to collect answers, opinions, responses, etc. from the target audience. Especially the questioning technique and tools have remarkable influence on the answering easiness and percentage. An advanced questioning methodology is, however, more than only collecting information. It functions as a media between specialists and other parties. By means of that kind of tool any specialist can communicate his/her area of expertise that might be difficult to others to understand, and receive valuable information as a feedback. The tacit knowledge that different parties possess becomes visible by using an appropriate assessment tool. Within organizational environments, especially, this comes into question when professional specialist expertise is used in communication with the management, personnel, suppliers, customers, and other stakeholders.

ZEF evaluation methodology was originally developed in Finland at Oulu University as Z-scored Electronic Feedback (= ZEF) tool. Effectiveness of its two dimensional evaluation structure was validated by University of Lapland. Commercial ZEF solution is the product of Oulu, Finland based innovative company ZEF Solutions Inc. ZEF is an all-purpose tool for assessments and comparisons that is suitable for all kinds of organizations.

ZEF is web-based evaluation solution operating as SAAS (Software as a Service). It is a software tool with which one may collect and evaluate information effectively and efficiently from even a big group of people. The visual appearance is easy to use and interesting or even exiting to the end-users. E.g. in Finland ZEF tool has been used by hundreds thousands of ordinary citizens in several cases of general societal interest.

Evaluation made by the ZEF tool includes the following process phases:

1. Construct your questions on the two-dimensional matrix or use customized templates.
2. Send an e-mail invitation to your target group to take part in the survey on the Internet.
3. Follow up the progress of the survey in real time and send reminders to the participants when required.
4. Get graphical reports that present average and variation of the individual answers in two dimensions. (see and click the following figure) Also verbal comments, explanations, questions, etc. may be obtained from the responders.

As an example ZEF tool may be used for an effective organizational self-assessment. It is very easy to apply with different self-assessment criteria, e.g. ZEF assessment application for Malcolm Baldrige short form assessment ”Are we making progress?”. There is also available the “3-In-1 assessment” ZEF application where all aspects of full Malcolm Baldrige and EFQM criteria and ISO 9000 standards have been combined. This application for example has also modified to health care services by using the guidance document CEN/TS 15224.

Another example of using ZEF-methodology was an international study carried out in 2008 by the standardization committee ISO/TC176/SC3 to get information on the significance of time, speed and agility and some other related aspects in organizations' businesses and how the ISO 9000 standards and some other quality management references support those aspects. The web site of the questionnaire is still open for information in the Internet. 

Detailed business information is obtained from ZEF raw data through statistical treatments. All individual respondent answers to the query items in the ZEF evaluations are recorded as separate data pieces that are then used for statistical analyses:

• The basic ZEF report presents the means and standard deviations of all respondents’ answers per query items in two dimensions
• The result data may be arranged according Z-score transformation to a normalized form that is useful when seeking to compare the relative standings of items from distributions with different means and standard deviations.
• Answers from respondents may be grouped in arbitrary way or presented as individual answers.
• Results of different ZEF evaluations, e.g. from different points in time, may be compared by using ZEF’s “comparison engine” function.
• Raw data of evaluations may be presented in the formats of Excel (.xls) or "Concurrent Versioning System" (.cvs) in order to facilitate the use of more sophisticated statistical tools, e.g. SPSS, for data analyses.

Challenging against quality burn-out

There is a lot of stagnation, doubts, and even frustration about quality related initiatives in many organizations, e.g. application of ISO 9000 standards and quality awards criteria has routinized into stereotypic rituals. Major reasons for this kind of harmful development obviously include lack of innovation, lack of courage to take radically new approaches, and immense busyness of business people.

What should be done for rehabilitating the whole quality professionalism and discipline?

When implementing quality management (QM), one should reform QM principles and create new effective professional methodology to be employed in a natural and innovative manner integrated with organization-specific business emphases and within contemporary management infrastructures and business environments. General ISO 9000 Quality Management Principles and Core Values and Concepts of the quality award models can be as a good starting point for this development. New business models and emergent technologies may cause problems but may also offer new challenging solutions.

When striving for competitiveness in these circumstances one could underscore the following aspects:

• Recognizing business performance excellence instead of a narrow quality thinking
  
• Striving for flexible realization of quality of management and leadership instead of distinct and vague quality management (i.e. management of quality)
  
• Adopting organizational learning instead of continual improvement
  
• Applying the "systematicity" (systematic approach) of the quality of leadership instead of formal and distinct quality systems
  
• Using business-related principles and actions of the quality of leadership instead of formal and general quality assurance requirements only
  
• Setting stretched business objectives instead of minimum standard requirements
• Aiming at innovative and unique solutions instead of stereotyped systems
  
• Relying on genuine and effective internal business performance self-assessments instead of third party audits and certifications of "artificial" quality systems
  
• Getting advantage of tacit knowledge instead of only records of explicit data and information
  
• Having genuine impacts on the company's quality approach and success by the behaviour of the top management.
  
• Using company's own internal expertise and effective cooperation with world-wide quality experts' network instead of external consultants

Basically, effective implementing organization-dedicated business integrated QM does not call for any extra measures or investments. General information sources e.g. ISO 9000 standards and performance excellence models can still be utilized as reference materials innovatively. Experiences have proved that it is always worthwhile to improve the existing management systematicity of the organization based on a systematic methodology. For QM the organization must be always ready but never finished. Managing for sustainable business success through quality is only possible if the responsible top manager is aware and actively and practically committed in his / her personal role to get quality happen in the whole company. Additionally, it is needed a productive cooperation between business leaders and quality experts.

Effective learning is the key for enhancing quality in management and leadership

Successful organizational management is based on right knowledge and managerial skills to use the knowledge for the current business needs. Organizational knowledge is particularly based on exchange of information between customers, employees, shareholders, suppliers, business partners, and the great public.

Organizational and personal learning are prerequisites for enhancing management/leadership skills in striving for business success. These skills are needed at different levels in organizations, including the board, executives, directors, managers, process owners, project managers, and individuals (self-management).

Aim of the Knowledge Work Environment (KWE) is to facilitate effective and efficient knowledge-intensive and networked business activities. Management/leadership is most important area of these activities in all organizations. KWE provides means for learning through improving internal and external interactive and collaborative communication of management, and building social knowledge and intelligence. Management learning is integrated with normal managing activities of the business leaders.

Typically management learning in organizations is based on training by traditional or e-learning means. However, investments in these solutions have not proved effective. Only basic management/leadership skills may be learned by traditional training programs. Business leaders are busy and not interested in using ordinary e-learning means. E-learning solutions based on “learning management systems” have not been encouraging. Systems are too expensive, learning too boring, search of material (learning objects) too cumbersome, and reusable objects not really reusable. Additional challenge is that half-life of the relevant business knowledge has shortened. KWE provides remarkable improvement to the current problems of organizational training and e-learning applications.

Effective learning requires application of new learning theories like connectivity, interactivity, and sharing information. Factually 80% of learning takes place by informal learning, e.g. by serendipic or parasitic learning. KWE is to realize these new learning theories in practical business cases by using modern IT (Interactive Technology) solutions. It also facilitates learning in networks which is practical situation in all business cases.On-the-job learning offers cost-effective way to link learning to the organizational needs and priorities.

KWE consists of ability to lead knowledge workers into electronic work areas, where they work in collaboration to learn by building new knowledge. They have also all relevant explicit information easily available through related documents. The basic KWE tools include blog, wiki, aggregator, forums, and files that are based on modern proved social software and Web 2.0 technology. Software for the tools-components are from the open source software community that is the biggest resource in the world for developing software products. Open software is easy to modify and customize, and it provides rapid application development.

A practical and significant example of managerial learning environment is related to organization’s strategic management process. Strategic management is strongly knowledge-based collaborative and innovative activity, and typically involved by organization's board of directors, executing managers, selected experts, personnel and stakeholders' representatives. KWE provides a new innovative approach for integrating quality into a management system and in that way realizing also a modern "quality management system". In organizations, there is a lot of similar networked collaborative knowledge-intensive cooperation. Especially benefits of using the KWE approach are obvious in cases where participants are busy and geographically scattered and where arranging synchronous of physical meetings is difficult. Typical cases suitable for KWE include expert groups, e.g. product designers, HRM people, quality managers, maintenance people, project groups, process teams, supplier or customer networks, networked SME's, e.g. small cooperating consulting or expert companies, and networked learning in educational institutes.