What is a Quality Culture and How Do I Get One?

Best Management Practices for Environmental Laboratories
Oral Presentation

Prepared by J. Thomas
EOS Worldwide, 2831 Weaver Ln, Batavia, Illinois, 60510, United States


Contact Information: [email protected]; 708-906-4214

ABSTRACT

Quality is an outcome, not a culture. Culture is best defined by the organization’s core values, and core values are the fundamental beliefs that guide a person’s actions. For an organization to have a culture focused on producing quality data, yes, it starts at the top with the founders/leaders, but an organization’s culture is already embedded within the people there. When I work with leadership teams, to define their core values, we don’t take an aspirational approach. Instead, we seek to discover what already exists. When a team realizes that they have a culture that is not what they want, they need only look to themselves and the people they have hired over the years. Changing an organization’s culture is very difficult and takes time. It starts by overhauling the recruitment and hiring processes to find people who share the core values that lead to quality. Finding people who share quality-based core values such as integrity, honesty, reliability, etc. is further complicated because those traits are difficult to uncover during a typical interview process. They are what Patrick Lencioni calls “pay to play” values, meaning every organization expects people to exhibit those core values. I mean, who would hire someone who is not honest? With a robust behavioral interviewing process, it is possible to identify and exclude candidates that are lacking in these traits, and that requires experienced interviewers and a great deal of time. To have a quality-based culture, you must have the “right” people. The right people are people who not only share your core values, but they (1) understand what is expected of them with regards to quality, (2) they get up every morning wanting to do it, and (3) they have the capacity, experience, education, resources (including time) to do the job well. This presentation will focus on:
1) What are core values and how do they define culture
2) Discovering your organizations core values
3) How do core values relate to your organizations overall vision
4) How to change a culture
5) Strategies for finding and keeping the right people