Quality Movement
Bill Mills Jr. founded William Mills Advertising & Marketing in 1977. He has more than 30 years experience in advertising, marketing, and management in the financial services industry. He currently directs the agency's management and creative services and heads the William Mills creative group composed of copywriters, art directors and production artists. He can be reached in care of Credit Union News or at 3091 East Shadowlawn Ave. N.E., Atlanta, GA 30305-2411; (404) 261-4900.
And They Went Into The
Hills Seeking WisdomOn a recent cold and rainy day, my business associate's son and I drove several hours to visit the advertising and marketing agency of a friend. Why we went and what we observed may be helpful to you. We intended to make it useful by helping us improve our performance.
My friend's agency is located in an East Tennessee town with a total population about one-third our downtown stadium capacity, behind main street and a tire store, across the street from the Baptist church, in a nice small office building which they own and are expanding.
Their agency makes a profit which would be considered handsome in any metropolitan area, claims to have a quality work environment with no stress, and everybody leaves at 5 p.m.
The morale seems to be high and there is a feeling of strong teamwork. If you've ever worked at an agency, this sounds like Alice in Wonderland. Furthermore, the agency was given the No. 1 quality award by an industry consultant who evaluated more then a thousand agencies.
"The secret," my friend professes, "is that we instituted the Deming Total Quality Management Program."
A former banker, the owner said that the agency was suffering all those maladies so common to the business, including financial failure. In desperation he sought any method of enlightenment which might get him out of a failure situation, when he attended a Deming Total Quality Management seminar. It was, to him, like a religious conversion. He saw this as the salvation of the agency and embraced it wholeheartedly. In his case, he was absolutely right.
If you are not familiar with Dr. Deming, you will be interested to know that he is a quality consultant in his 90s who is still extremely active. Although little known in his native country for much of his career, Dr. Deming was the architect of modern Japanese industry. More than any other single person, he helped change the term "Made in Japan" from and mark of a cheap, inferior product to the most desired and respected products in the world. The most coveted award in Japanese industry is the annual Deming Prize. Companies go to unbelievable lengths to win it because it signifies the winner as "The Best of the Best."
Although he had sparked a modern industrial miracle, Dr. Deming was relatively unknown in the United States until the early 1980s when a television program on his work was presented on public television. Since then he has consulted for many of America's top companies and has conducted seminars almost non-stop.
Dr. Deming's background is that of a statistician, and much of his work involves quality improvement using statistical analysis. Once you have a reasonable understanding of his theories, it is fairly easy to see how they might apply in a manufacturing environment, but how could it apply to highly customized service organizations such as advertising agencies or credit unions?
If you think you will find the formula in the balance of this article, stop here and save your time. What we observed and learned from our friend and his associates was only the tip of the iceberg. Even if we had stayed for a week, we still couldn't walk away with the magic formula--because there isn't one. This is frustrating to those of us who like formulas and quick-fix solutions, and why more of us have not already embraced the program.
The fact is, the Deming Program is not so much a program as it is a journey.
Many large and small American companies such as Proctor & Gamble, Motorola, and Ford Motor Co. have used the TQM Program, along with other efforts, to become globally competitive and help reverse the trend of exporting jobs from the United States. For example, Ford is competitive with Japanese car manufacturers in both quality and the cost of labor per vehicle. Ford vehicles are manufactured at an average of about $750 per vehicle less than General Motors -- a significant competitive edge!
The nearest thing you can find to a formula in the Deming TQM Program is its "Fourteen Points and Seven Deadly Sins." Even after you have learned them, the challenge is finding ways to implement the program.
If pressed to explain why the program works (and not everyone successfully implements it), I would say that two of its most important attributes are:
1. It empowers every human being to contribute to quality and success.
2. It emphasizes constancy of purpose to forever improve.
If one of your New Year's resolutions is to improve, you might want to purchase a copy of The Deming Management Method by Mary Walton, available from most business bookstores.
I didn't mention the name of the Masengill Marketing Associates because this is my column, so why should I give them the publicity?
| About Our People | What Others Have Said | Mission Statement | News Stories |
Back
MMA * Research * Communicating * NIEP * Results
HOME
1120 Peck Avenue
*
© 1997 Masengill Marketing Associates Robin@Masengill.com
All Rights Reserved
