In many organizations, pressure points show up in recurring forms: repeated rework, variation in service levels, and initiatives that stall at the execution stage. These are rarely separate issues; they usually indicate that decisions related to quality, including standards, role definitions, and learning mechanisms, still lack sufficient clarity and structure in governance at senior levels. When quality is managed in a systematic and transparent way, the organization gains predictability and credibility. When it is handled in a fragmented way, exceptions multiply and begin to dominate the management agenda.
Quality As a Core Indicator of Management Performance
The effects of quality management appear first in everyday practices, ways of working, and decision-making, before they show up in formal indicators. In practice, they are visible in three main areas:
- Execution Reliability: The extent to which commitments, projects, and services are completed correctly the first time, without the need for significant rework or escalation.
- Organizational Load: The amount of leadership time absorbed by crises, approvals, and exceptions, instead of being devoted to structured planning and regular review.
- Internal and External Trust: The level of confidence that internal teams, partners, and stakeholders have in the organization’s ability to meet its commitments, adhere to agreed timelines, and provide accurate and reliable data.
Taken together, these signals point to substantial indirect costs. Data from the American Society for Quality indicates that many organizations incur quality-related costs in the range of 15 to 20 percent of sales revenue, and in some cases up to about 40 percent of total operating costs. This reflects how much capacity is consumed by remediation and correction instead of being directed toward preventive improvement and the sustainable development of services and products.
Insights from Practice and Research
Experience and external benchmarks point in the same direction: quality outcomes largely reflect how organizations are led and governed.
- Culture and Leadership: A large body of work on quality culture consistently highlights four recurring drivers of strong quality cultures: leadership emphasis, credible messaging, colleagues involvement, and employee ownership.
- Standard Practice: With over 1.26 million valid ISO 9001 certificates worldwide, structured quality systems are now a mainstream tool of business administration, not a specialist add-on.
Management Priorities for Quality
To translate these insights into practice, executive teams need to focus on four main priorities.
- Clarify Governance and Responsibilities: Assign clear executive responsibility for quality outcomes and treat quality indicators as standing items alongside strategy and risk in senior forums.
- Integrate Quality with Performance: Embed quality-related expectations (reliability, timeliness) into role objectives and review conversations, using quality indicators for coaching and process adjustment.
- Manage End-to-End Processes: Allocate ownership for key service journeys and use frameworks such as ISO 9001 to align process design, documentation, and corrective action across units.
- Use Data for Early Intervention: Consolidate operational data into concise dashboards to direct management attention to recurring patterns, root causes, and structural redesign rather than isolated incidents.
Quality is a direct outcome of management choices about standards, role allocation, and follow-up and execution mechanisms. The difference between organizations that strengthen their ability to achieve their objectives and develop their services and those that face increasing organizational and operational challenges lies in whether these choices are explicit, properly governed, and continually improved, or allowed to build up over time as unexamined routines across the organizational system.
