What is Radical Quality?

Radical quality is an approach to describing how we think and act in five cognitive domains that comprise a cognitive system.  Each domain consists of an approach to processes and a set of actions that one employs, depending upon the circumstances, which are always unique to each organizational setting.  As Dr. Deming often said in his lectures, “There are no tube socks.”  However, while each situation is specific, the thought processes and methods are universal.

The core of these cognitive domains centers around a commitment to assessment – the willingness to seek the unvarnished truth about actual conditions, using data and evidence, even when, (or especially when) assessment forces us to confront truths that are embarrassing or make us uncomfortable.  Assessment, as a form of thinking, is a meta-cognitive process, meaning that it evaluates situations and guides us in our thinking about actions.  Assessment comprises a wide variety of methods, including peer review, quality audits, surveillances, interviews, surveys, and many others.  An ironclad commitment to proactive and ongoing assessment, the desire to know the truth, and a constant willingness to return to repeatedly re-assess and stay current, is the starting point for radical quality.

The practice of radical quality revolves around using assessment to drive actions in four other cognitive domains.  In some cases, assessment leads to thinking and actions that sustain the control of processes and systems, thereby protecting the organization, its customers, employees, communities, and environment from potential harm or loss.  The thinking and actions that result in the control of quality have historically been the cornerstone of the quality discipline, but have evolved considerably over time.  Dr. Walter Shewhart provided a breakthrough in our understanding of the control of variation in repeatable processes and Dr. Deming opened up a whole new understanding of variation and its impact on the control of quality in processes.

Clear definition of processes, clearly written and accessible procedures, effective employee training, use of clear communication practices, adherence to procedures and safe practices, inspections, statistical quality control and the design and inclusion of steps that prevent errors and that safeguard processes are all now vital components of the thinking and actions that control processes and systems, resulting in high quality   The radical quality practitioner understands and champions the understanding that all of these actions are not financial burdens on an organization, but actually reduce costs and are essential to meeting schedules and meeting customer expectations.  They result in lower costs and improved competitive position, to echo Dr. Deming.

In other cases, assessment may indicate the need for thinking and actions that repair or fix a process or system that used to be functioning well, but has gotten off track, or is broken.  This is sometimes called firefighting or problem solving.  It is far better to keep processes and systems maintained properly, but sometimes deviations occur and processes need to be repaired, which requires some specific approaches to thinking in order to be effective.  Repairing broken processes may be vital to the survival of an organization and essential for mitigating the damage being caused to customers, employees, surrounding communities, and the environment.

Repairing or fixing a process or system that has gotten off track includes several important approaches to thinking to identify the causes of deviations that have occurred, the analysis of root causes that enabled the deviations to occur, and the use of corrective action systems to ensure that appropriate corrective actions have indeed been implemented and are effective.

Often, the core actions of assessment lead to the observation that the process or system is not broken and that adequate controls are in place to keep it from becoming broken, but there is a need for incremental improvement in order to further improve service to customers and to improve and organization’s competitive position. The realization that the improvement of quality was just as important, or perhaps even more important than quality control, was a major breakthrough in thinking in the 1960s by quality thinkers such as Dr. Joseph Juran and Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa.

Much of the focus within the quality discipline over the past 75 years has been on thinking and actions that result in improvements.  Ishikawa’s Guide to Quality Control is actually a handbook on improvement.  Juran’s Managerial Breakthrough, published in 1964, focused on the thinking processes and methods (he referred to them as “diagnostic methods”) that would enable organizations to systematically improve.  Dr. Deming’s workshops and writings focused on using statistical methods to understand what to improve – that much variation is common to the system, meaning that the system is not broken (requiring fixing), that that the system must be changed by using methods for improvement.

Thousands of people around the world have contributed articles and reports, given presentations at conferences, taught workshops and facilitated hundreds of thousands of improvement projects, validating Dr. Juran’s observation that improvement happens project –by-project and in no other way.  Collectively these practitioners have created untold benefits to organizations and the standard of living to people around the world.

However, at times our assessment makes it clear that incremental improvements are not enough.  Our problem-solving reveals that there are no adequate solutions.  Our best efforts to control quality lead us to understand that our current level of knowledge and understanding is not enough.  We need to re-invent a process or an entire organization, using innovative thinking methods.

While Dr. Deming advocated for an understanding of the variation in a system and counseled against implementing changes into a system without this understanding (knowing it would only make a system more chaotic), he also noted that the control of quality and the incremental improvement of quality alone are not sufficient to sustain an organization or meet the needs of customers and humanity.  Critical assessment sometimes requires us to innovate.  Anyone who attended one of Deming’s seminars will recall him making this point with his scathing question: “Who wants to be the best manufacturer of buggy whips?”

Radical quality embraces the thinking and actions that support innovation.  Those who focus on quality improvement often employ Alex Osborn’s method of brainstorming and more recent adaptations of this method.  Many practitioners draw from a field of thinking about innovation known as synectics.  In some cases, quality practitioners use TRIZ – the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving – developed by Geinrich Altshuller.

Practitioners of radical quality understand and employ thinking and actions from all of these approaches to innovation.  They understand the vital need to be able to break out of our conventional thinking and develop ideas that contradict history.

The chart below illustrates the relationship among the metacognitive processes that make up radical quality – with assessment at the center, leading to theories and methods that sustain existing processes and protect against unwanted change; theories and methods that help us recover when unwanted change happens in a process; theories and methods that enable us to improve processes; and theories and methods that enable us to re-invent processes and find new, innovative approaches to taking significant leaps ahead.

Metacognitive Processes Chart

Radical quality methods – in theory and practice – function as a vehicle for controlling and creating change.  Radical quality engages people in controlling or enacting change in what social scientists would call both a “rational” model of change, where people recognize their self-interests in controlling or creating change, and a “clinical” model of change, where experts (quality practitioners) use collaboration and dialogue to assist people in analyzing systems and making changes.  These two approaches to change are distinct from an “engineering” model where experts decide on change that people should accept and use power to impose change.      

Given this brief overview of the concept of radical quality and its principles, there are five headings on this web site that will dig more deeply into each cognitive domain – assessment, the thinking and actions associated with controlling, repairing, improving, and re-inventing processes and systems.