Corporate, quality and leadership culture

When you hear and see how often carelessness, laissez-faire attitudes and wrong priorities cause errors, non-quality and waste, it makes you wonder about the quality culture in some organizations. People often talk about quality culture, corporate culture, leadership culture and error culture without providing any concrete and tangible knowledge. Especially where the lack of culture is lamented, it remains unclear how it can be achieved, expanded and improved. Corporate culture seems elusive.

Mission statements are available in many cases. However, it remains unclear how effective they actually are. During analyses or discussions on the topic of the mission statement, the question often arises as to what has changed since the mission statement was published. The answers usually range between incomprehension and helplessness. Publication is often the only step towards operationalization. Whether the managers now act differently or embody and communicate the values better remains unclear. A better corporate culture or quality culture is often not apparent.

When it comes to culture issues, many executives and quality managers are often uncertain and insensitive. In their training, they learn mostly technical basics, organizational theory and leadership theory, but little about corporate culture. Cultural issues are often referred to as soft issues, even though they are just as important to a company’s success as other issues. The skills required are as tangible as others, but often lack the methods to effectively address the issue. People who can understand, guide, and change human behavior are rarely found in leadership positions or are limited in their impact as culture creators by leaders who tick differently.

In the sub-topic of quality culture, there are also aggravating regulations that have shaped quality management for decades. ISO 9004 considers the term culture mostly only as an influencing factor to be taken into account and once under the aspect of shaping the culture. Quality policy has often remained on paper and implementation weak.

From practical experience, there are two fields of action and one central driver for actively shaping corporate culture and quality culture. Operationalizing values that guide action and shaping relationships are essential.