Don't Tell Them it's About Quality!

Joe Wynne is a versatile Project Manager experienced in delivering medium-scope projects in large organizations that improve workforce performance and business processes. He has a proven track record of delivering effective, technology-savvy solutions in a variety of industries and a unique combination of strengths in both process management and workforce management.

  Quality  

Project manager Roger is collecting horror stories. He and his “go-to guy” Sheila are interviewing many of the key players and some experienced workers in his upcoming software development project. Roger and Sheila are asking for recent examples where the interviewee did not get proper inputs necessary to complete work by deadlines.

This is a slightly depressing exercise, so why bother? Roger wants to get people to work as if quality mattered without reproducing the communications, training and other actions that have been unsuccessful in the past. In recent projects, workers rejected quality efforts thinking they were too bureaucratic and time-consuming in the severely constrained organization in which they work. The fact that quality has fallen off the radar since the recession has not helped. The result is that quality problems are worse than ever--and threaten Roger’s project.

Roger has to motivate the workforce knowing the current situation and that he cannot restart and complete new, formal quality efforts prior to beginning his project. He needs a new tactic.

The Secret Plan
Roger needs to informally manage to better quality in a particular project and rebrand quality issues. He needs to communicate in terms of workers getting what they need to do their job well. Workers want to do a good job and resent it when forces beyond their …

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