Some have explained these failures as a blocking of improvement by an impervious bureaucracy. But that's like Yogi Berra saying that his Yankees would have won every game except that some of them ended too soon. The improvement focus of many of the private-sector companies that are America's business leaders today is built around a marriage of what might be called a form of organizational populism together with strong management leadership. This kind of management has the quality know-how to establish the organization's plan for improvement and then to implement the practices that help everyone in the organization accelerate quality service and assist their organizations in successfully managing the competitive pressures that face all levels of government, business, and education today. I am often asked to explain the durability of total quality in these times when queasiness about quality continues to grow and when there are generalized discussions about quality but no explanation of the hard-edged improvements that it can accomplish.
Total quality is durable because it is the competitive connector today.
It connects organizations with their customers, service receivers, employees, and suppliers in difficult times. Leadership with a clear improvement vision. This vision must recognize the fact that an organization's culture is the collective result of the organization's actions and can be affected only by hands-on changes in these actions and a deep confidence in the capabilities of men and women throughout the organization to bring about these changes. It is leadership that creates an organization-wide atmosphere of superior performance, and leadership with a sureness and lightness of touch understands that a good total quality management system works best when you hardly know it's there. Superior use of human resources through the kind of empowerment that I prefer to think of as organizational flexibility.