Quality Council to Institutionalize Improvement

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.