3. Each department and agency head should establish a top-level "quality council" to lead that organization's culture change. (2) The President should encourage all department and agency heads to establish top-level quality councils. According to Dr. Joseph Juran, a noted management expert, "the first step in mobilizing for the projects collectively is to establish a quality council. The basic responsibility of this council is to launch, coordinate, and institutionalize annual quality improvement. If no such council is in existence, the upper managers should create one."(13) FQI reports that virtually every organization that has successfully introduced quality management in the federal government had also formed a quality council of top leaders--or executive steering group- -to lead the effort.(14) Quality councils are usually chaired by department or agency heads, or their deputies, and include other members of the senior leadership team. In organizations with cooperative labor-management efforts underway, union leaders are also often members. Membership sometimes also includes major external suppliers. By establishing a quality council, top leadership provides identity and structure to culture change. It also serves to legitimize and institutionalize the quality improvement effort by being the first concrete indication that top leadership is willing to act.(15) This is especially true of cooperative labor-management efforts.
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