Workshop Challenges and Success Factors in Quality Management Tony Bovaird, Elke Löffler,

1. Workshop Challenges and Success Factors in Quality Management Tony Bovaird, Elke Löffler, Salvador Parrado “Quality Management in the Public Sector” Vilnius 27-28 March 2006

2. Getting the quality assessment right

3. Which quality assessment approach to choose? • Self-assessment by public agencies • Gets ownership but can be myopic and self-deluding • Unlikely to be trusted by other stakeholders • External assessment by ‘auditors/inspectors’ • Independent but not always trusted by the agency • Asks ‘hard questions’ but little understanding of context? • Either superficial or expensive • 360° appraisal by relevant stakeholders • Independent • Diversity of judgements • Results likely to be seen as important by the agency • Varying levels of understanding of the context • Can be embedded into ongoing learning relationship between the agency and its stakeholders

4. Success factors • Do not rely solely on repeat self-assessments • Bring in a professional external auditor from time to time (e.g. certified EFQM assessor) • Ask your stakeholders (actual and potential clients, politicians, business, etc.) about their perceptions of service quality

5. Bringing about quality improvements

6. From the identification of ‘areas for improvement’ to focused action • Effective use of any quality tool does not guarantee organisational success • The difficulty of implementation is the biggest challenge in practice. • The self-assessment leaves organisations to define priorities over the relative merits of intended actions but most quality frameworks provide no guidelines for doing this. • There is a risk that improvement activities may focus on areas for improvement which can be easily achieved, rather than those which bring added value to the stakeholders of the organisation

7. Success factors • Organisations seeking to improve performance and service quality complement the use of quality assessment frameworks with strategic management processes and agreed corporate problem solving processes (e.g. six sigma) • The introduction of a Balanced Scorecard may help to prioritise improvement activities and make sure that they are linked to strategically important goals of the organisation

8. Sustaining quality improvements in the long-term

9. Continuous improvements or ‘step change’? • Self-assessment or benchmarking can create a focus on current performance rather than an assessment of capability for the future • Step-change requires a radical vision, often triggered by external pressures or threats • Step-change can only be sustained by cultural change inside the organisation – this means that current practices become unacceptable • The public sector usually prefers NOT to attempt step change!

10. Success factors • Only people with high expectations consistently improve in the things they try • Only staff with high expectations improve their performance consistently • Only users with high expectations learn to get the most out of services • Only Board members (or politicians) with high expectations get the best for the groups they represent … so the key element in sustaining a quality-oriented organisational culture is the raising of expectations

11. Exercise Which challenges have you experienced in improving quality in your organisation and how have you responded to them? Give an example of ONE major difficulty you have overcome and how you achieved this.