Based on the theme “Quality centred management for tomorrow – insight into an evolving world”
Abstracts: We may be somehow managing today, but managing tomorrow is different. Customers, who were mainly concentrating on function are now taking it for granted and their aspiration to be unique has become more important. They want something unique and not the monotonous commodity. Similar is the case with other stakeholders. No one is satisfied by just function which is the bare minimum. We need to understand the changing needs of not only customers but of all stakeholders. We have to understand the changes taking place around the world and plan the activities. Understanding customer needs and expectations and fulfilling them is very important for an organization to survive. The aspiration-driven unspecified needs are much more and complicated than specified needs. While fulfilling customer needs, it is also very essential to meet the needs of all stakeholders and have a balance. The customer standing in a safe place is visible to all as stretching his helping hand to lift the sinking organization from the crisis, whereas other stakeholders jump in the water to lift the organization up. The customer when tired can leave his hands whereas others sink along with the organization. The stakeholders when managed well shall not allow an organization to sink. Anticipating changes and acting proactively by suitable strategies can only help the organization to face the challenges and sustain their business. The roots of success lie in self-determination, sincerity, hard work and dedication supported by knowledge, value, experience and creativity. Promoting Work Quality management can help in getting success. The success can be sustained if we promptly answer the Five Golden Questions which insists on having a procedure, ensuring it as best for the situation, implementing them, checking whether the results were achieved as anticipated and comparing with the competitors and finally re-engineering the products and processes.
The above are like principles – fundamental and hence evergreen. There can be no two views on this. The times are changing; and changing very rapidly; in many cases, even appearing to challenge these accepted principles and fundamentals. What does the emerging world affect these principles? What new learnings must we superpose on these principles to keep these principles unchanging and relevant? The paper attempts to propose some insights into the fundamental principles as they will play out in Quality Based Management for Tomorrow. Live examples from emerging business as compared with traditional industry are shared to exemplify the insights.
We are proceeding to an aspiration-driven environment.
In a competitive business, environment managing is not easy. We hear people saying that “We are somehow managing today”. Managing an organization is generally considered as achieving smooth working leading to the profits based on understanding and meeting customer requirements and providing quality goods and services at competitive prices in time. However, by going deep we realize that we need to do much more than this. It is true for today, tomorrow and day after also. No one has seen tomorrow, but have seen today, yesterday and day before. We see fast-changing technology along with fast spreading of information and knowledge. This is resulting in changing aspirations among the buyers and also the competition. The aspirations of stakeholders are also changing.
The developments in information technology have made knowledge sharing easy. People with changing aspirations are not keen on remaining stable at one place. They want to reach higher heights. It is resulting in increased attrition of the employees, which is a challenge to manage. Nothing can be kept a secret like earlier days. Manual labour is rapidly being replaced with automation, but at the same time, the employee costs are increasing along with huge capital costs. Fashion or aspiration which was normally restricted to dress has now spread to various fields which were earlier only functional like buildings, roads, vehicles, computers, mobiles, packing etc. In earlier days, when the buying power was less, concern was on the basic functions of any product or service, however, now function is being assumed as a must be property and innovative and attractive presentation is getting more weight. People are asking “What is special about your product or service which others are not able to give”. People do not want to use the same thing for a long time may be a car, computer, dress, watch, jewellery, machine, food or even the house where they stay. They aspire to some change and uniqueness. The expectations of customers are also changing similar to fashion. To be successful in changing the world we need to proactively expect changes and prepare ourselves to face them. We need to understand the changing needs and expectations of not only customers but of all stakeholders, the changes taking place around the world and plan the activities in line with the changes. If we can emerge as the trend makers and succeed, then we are the leaders. One who is dreaming of managing tomorrow should be able to design the change and manage it.
Understanding customer needs and aspirations.
Any business cannot work unless the customer’s requirements are met. If a customer has to be kept happy there is a need to understand the real needs and aspirations. Just sticking to the stated specifications or the design developed by the organization cannot ensure customer satisfaction. One should understand that no customer shall be able to precisely tell all his requirements, and it is the duty of the supplier to understand them and design the products and processes to meet their aspirations. This is truer to the changing aspirations. When a customer sees something new in the market he demands it. Fig 1 briefly explains the difference between specified needs and unspecified needs.
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