This is not to suggest that there is no place for managerial systems and advancing
technology. These are essential. But on their own they cannot be enough. The best system
of quality management, ISO 9000, is a fine system. But that is all it is – a system, a
scaffolding within which people must transform the pile of bricks it embraces into a house.
Any system is all form and no content. The latter must be supplied by people. Many
managers set great store by systems, and it is easy to over-systematize, to fall into the trap
of assuming that because there is a system for dealing with every eventuality then every
eventuality will be dealt with; disappointment and frustration sometimes ensue. Systems
sometimes help us to generate the right answers to the wrong questions, whereas quality is
about asking the right questions. Systems are concerned with administration; quality is to do
with inspiration. This is the most important gift the quality function can make to the
organization: a vision of success to which it is feasible to aspire, to say ‘this is where we are
aiming, this is our strategic goal’; and then to provide the means of achieving it, the
techniques of quality, saying ‘this is how we get there’. This is the tactical support.
In this way the quality function will finally free itself from the stigma of being a despised
discipline. It will have earned respect. And quality, of world-class leadership, is achieved
through education, which is what this handbook is all about.