"Quality is not an act--it is a habit." --Aristotle
High Impact Quality: Approach
The chart below is a visual summary of all the critical elements of the High Impact Quality theoretical approach. Understanding the theoretical framework of High Impact Quality is not critical for the successful application of its principles to the practical problems faced by small business owners and entrepreneurs. If your predeliction is for action versus contemplation, then it may be more productive to skip ahead to the next section. Return to the theoretical constructs if you find yourself simply wanting a deeper understanding or if you're in a position to apply the basic principles in situations that are more complex with farther reaching impacts across a larger enterprise.
The model is very similar to most of the standard texts on strategic quality management. We start with the customer (or client if you're in a business-to-business market) and the customer's influence is felt throughout the organization--signified by the underlying red arrow. The innermost block on the chart represents the business and its sales or marketing processes. The business, hopefully, is creating value, that is offered through either products or services, to their prospects and customers. The exchange of compensation for that value is represented by the two, smaller, green arrows. The larger green arrow represents the larger value being sent to the customer while the smaller green arrow depicts the smaller value of the compensation that the customer remits to the business in exchange for that value.
Between creating value and delivering that value to customers, the High Impact Quality model, places two filters: image and expectations. Both of these are a slight refinement to more traditional quality models, but enormously important in attracting prospects and creating loyal, repeat customers. The importance of image or brand identify is more fully explained, both in this theoretical overview and in the individual chapters on creating loyal customers.
Support functions, which have an enormous impact on both the business' image and the expectations set and met for customers, are part of the innermost core that defines the business. Often the support functions are the principle source of face-to-face, phone, and email interaction with the customer, and the customer's support staff, after the initial sale. The outermost blocks, which encapsulate all of these core functions, are comprised of the leadership, at the top, and the employees, at the bottom. Although symbolically, this hierarchical model emulates the most common organizing principles in most businesses, we will see in the chapters on employees and leadership that the best companies have a leadership culture which empowers the entire employee base. Simlarly, the best leaders remain close to their customers and their employees; carefully learning and listening while they guide the company with their vision and strategic direction. As we'll see in subsequent sections: effective, engaged leaders and effective, engaged employees are two sides of the same coin--in a well run company.
Through the rest of this introduction to the theory behind High Impact Quality we'll build the model shown above piece by piece, with an extended commentary and fuller explanation of how each piece fits into the larger picture.
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