Life is soooo easy.

Just do your job. Don’t worry. Everything will be all right.

A new management program ? Sure !

A new quality initiative ? No problem !

A corporate audit system with new quality and productivity standards ? Why not ?

Lean manufacturing, Six Sigma training, Kaizen and 5S on top of it all?

Hey… we can take it …and more !

Oh yes…and we guarantee everything mentioned above will be maintained for ever.

Sure….

Let’s stress quality.

And let quality stress us out of our wits !!

A recent series of studies by  a stress management entrepreneur, supported by a bunch of eminent stress experts all concluded that stress is ….good for your health.

Hey ?

Yes, yes, stress is good for your health as long as you see stress in a new perspective. Stress is part of our life. It helped us survive the sabre-tooth tiger millennia ago and the same fight or flight response, stimulating the release of cortical and adrenaline, helps us today to …. die young.

Yep… too much stress for a prolonged period will kill you as certainly as the cigarette and booze most of us will fall down to release the pressure once in a while.

Unless you change your perspective.

And see the stressors in the environment as a series of challenges. Stimulating challenges that are the very vast majority of the time NOT life threatening.

I am not talking natural disasters here, although, yet again, a new corporate program might be perceived as such….

And most of Quality initiatives will be perceived as such by most of the people if the communication plan is not up to par !

Quality is often taken as increased pressure to out-perform ourselves in a environment that is already over pressured to :

  •  satisfy the customer ;
  • please the shareholders ;
  • comply with the government agencies ;
  • and yes….provide acceptable metric to guarantee bonuses to some people ….

So let’s do as the experts suggests : change our perspective !

Could we communicate better to …

    • clarify our quality statement ?
    • confirm the main direction ?
    • demonstrate the cost of quality ?
    • reduce the horrendous number of rejects ?
    • motivate our people to work according to standards ?
    • facilitate idea generation ?
    • catalyze idea implementation ?
    • lower prejudice ?
    • listen better ?
    • manage better ?

 

I am convinced we can.

I am convinced we can stress quality a little bit more…in a good way.

 

Now…  for that elevated cortisol blood test !

 

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