When I was an entrepreneur, I attended a Quality Management Program which was based on Phil Crosby's viewpoint on QM.
And the program changed the way I looked at life.
We always hear that to "Err is human", and accept mistakes in workplace and in personal life with a philosophical shrug. People are conditioned in their early life, especially in a more philosophical country like India, that it is normal to make mistakes and this belief gets firmed up by the time they start working. As kids, our mistakes are glossed over or covered up by the parents. At workplace, we expect others to make up for the mistakes we do -which is unfair. If everyone thinks like that, we will end up with a pile of defective products and services that increases Waste, which as you know is the real enemy of any organization as I had posted once here in this blog
Then, do we have an inbuilt error ratio? We do not. We might drop a stainless steel vessel, but rarely do we drop a glass vessel. We rarely make a mistake while crossing a street, for the consequences can be fatal. We carry eggs, glass, and other breakable substances very carefully, while being careless about paper, books or a broom. Another interesting thing is that while we accept imperfection in us, we rarely tolerate imperfection in others. We can see hoardes of examples of this while driving, where people scream at another driver just minutes after they themselves cutting across another driver without notice. Hence, it is not as if there is a built in error ratio within us. Errors need not happen.
Then, why do errors happen?
According to Crosby, errors or mistakes are casued by two things : Lack of Knowledge and Lack of Attention. Knowledge can be measured and deficiencies corrected through tried-and-true means. One can overcome knowledge inadequacies through learning, either from the book or through experience. But lack of attention must be corrected by the person himself through an acute reappraisal of his or her moral values. Lack of attention is an attitude problem. The person who commits himself to watch each detail and carefully avoid error takes the giant step toward setting a goal of Zero Defects in all things. Zero Defects is an attitude to Do Things Right, the First Time, Every time, and attitude, they say, is a little thing that makes a big difference – if it has to be, it is up to me.
Hence, make an effort to change your attitude, and,
DO THINGS RIGHT, FIRST TIME, EVERY TIME, and ON TIME
