One approach or let’s call it a framework in Quality Management is the GAP framework. The purpose of this framework is to find out the areas, where to focus on. There are so many areas in quality management to look into and to improve, but we can’t look at all of them of course. We need to focus on the important ones and those can be different in any company or team.
Hence, one of the first activities should be to identify the battles worth fighting and to define where to attack first.
The main question the GAP framework is asking is the following: Is there a gap between how you manage quality and how you should be managing quality?
And when trying to find answers to that question, look into the following areas:
- Management and customers
- Individual and company goals
- Procedure and execution
- Company promise and follow-through
- Customer expectations and experience
So, what does that mean?
GAP Framework Areas
Management and customers
With management, I mean here primarily the decision maker in a company. And quite often there is a mismatch between what management thinks a customer needs or wants, and what the customer really needs or wants. And this might have several reasons. Sometimes customers don’t even know what they need to be successful or sometimes the customer is phrasing it in a misunderstanding way. And sometimes the company simply ignores the customer’s voice or believes to know better. Whatever the reason is, it leads to a gap between the company and the customer, impacting the business. So, how to identify those gaps? Let’s start by looking at the communication and communication channels between both. Is customer feedback being taken into account? Is there a proper process in place to ensure that customer needs are met? Are there ways to measure customer satisfaction, e.g. using NPS (Net Promoter Score)? Is there a good way for customers to communicate feature requests? Has your Sales team a good relationship with your key customers? And there are thousand similar questions. Uncovering these gaps is key to do the right Quality Management actions to improve business results.
Individual and company goals
Quality gaps often arise when individual goals do not align with those of the organization. And this happens more often than you think. But how can this happen? Well, there are many reasons and many of them have to do with communication. Sometimes there is no company vision or mission and no company strategy or goals. And even if meanwhile most companies have those, they are not properly communicated by the higher management teams. And even if they are, very often the communication breaks when passed down the ranks, especially in organizations with many hierarchy levels, and the strategy will not make it all the time to each and every employee. In addition, it highly depends on the middle management to translate the company strategy and goals into clear team and individual goals, understood by each and every team member. Often those managers are not enabled or trained to break down those goals and to explain to every team member how he or she fits into the overall strategy. Luckily this can be found out easily. Simply ask a few employees if they know the company’s vision, mission, strategy, or goals and ask them to explain how their individual goals and career paths are aligned with those.
It is so important to identify any discrepancies between what individuals want to achieve versus what the organization wants to accomplish as this could lead to so many misunderstandings and misalignments down the road.
Procedure and execution
Quality issues may manifest if procedures are not followed properly during execution or if they have been poorly designed from the start. Most organizations fail already by not having processes in place at all or insufficiently. Without processes, there is too much room for interpretation, errors, and misunderstandings, and consequently, business results are comparable with lottery results. Hence you better try to understand your process landscape and identify gaps. You can do that by external consultants or by asking your employees questions like: What are you doing currently and can you show me the process describing that step? How do you make sure to not forget steps A, B, and C, can you show me the checklist you are using? How do you get to know if there is a dependency to or from your work and how do you resolve that dependency? But this is only the first part. The second is to make sure that existing processes are followed. Here you can ask questions like: How do you know that you are doing a good job? How do you measure success? How do you detect discrepancies or deviations? Those questions go more into the KPI and metrics area. If you ask people if they follow the process, everyone will answer yes. So better ask for data showing what is really happening.
Hence, evaluating how each procedure is implemented, identifying areas of improvement, and revisiting existing processes can help identify any quality gaps in this area.
Company promise and follow-through
Companies must always strive for excellence when it comes to making promises as well as delivering on them; otherwise, there may exist some risks which could damage your reputation and business significantly. And this has two aspects of course, towards customers and employees.
If you promise a customer to provide a certain product or feature at a certain date, you better make sure to keep that promise. If you advertise your products to be the best in class, you better are that good. If a customer feels cheated or fooled, how loyal will he be to your products? Key again here, is customer communication and customer relationship. You want to know if a customer is unhappy. Most customers leave silently, but the better your relationship, the higher the probability the customer gives you a chance to correct your mistake. But actually, you don’t want to be in that correcting spot in the first place. So better be careful what you promise, or have the processes and systems in place, so that you can keep your promises to your customers, no matter what.
And the second aspect, similarly important is to keep your promises towards your employees. Happy employees are loyal, bring in ideas, and regularly go the extra mile. Unhappy employees simply leave, taking with them all their knowledge and skills, or even worse do only what they are asked for reluctantly or sabotage. You don’t want that.
Keeping track of customer interactions, monitoring delivery timelines, and ensuring consistency across different departments – all these steps can help to identify any potential gap.
GAP Framework Summary
The GAP framework provides a simple and comprehensive approach to identifying and addressing potential quality gaps in businesses. Choose your battles and target the issues first, where you can expect the highest gain when correcting those issues.
Hence if you haven’t answered the question yet, now would be a good time:
Is there a gap between how you manage quality and how you should be managing quality?