A client remarked the other day that she had 26 priority items and it was difficult to place quality near the top. I don’t see quality as a priority item. More specifically, I don’t see quality as an item.

When quality is driven as a program or a special system, then it is easy to make the mistake of benchmarking its priority with other business activities. It is like giving love a priority in a relationship. Love is not an item competing with other activities. It is infused over time into the whole of the relationship.

Quality is conformance to requirements. When do we conform to requirements? Every time we perform a work transaction to achieve an output for somebody. A priority therefore is given to that work transaction; or to that output; or to that somebody. If one is a person of integrity, conformance to requirements (or doing what you said you would do) is therefore something one wants to achieve for any job, whatever the priority.

If your organization has a policy that demands integrity as a way of life, then conformance to requirements is your objective every time you do something. To promote such a lifestyle, there may be organized activities such as classes for you and your colleagues. Or they may be activities aimed at working on opportunities for improvement. These activities, like any other work transaction, then become items that can be assigned with a "priority".

A culture of integrity is helped along by clear requirements, prevention, a "right first time" mind set and a strong aversion to paying for mistakes. This culture is manifested in the daily realities of delivering according to what was agreed. Not in how well you do a quality program or system.

© Daniel Kwok, 1999