Save Quality Management!

Disciplines Compete Like Companies

Specialist departments like Sales, Controlling — and Quality Management — operate like companies in a market economy. They must:

• Create measurable value
• Differentiate themselves
• Be better in their discipline than any generalist

Otherwise, they’ll be sidelined or phased out.

The Problem: QM Has Lost Focus

Quality management is increasingly misaligned with its original purpose. Its public image revolves around certificates and compliance — activities that often add little to no real value. In fact, they sometimes destroy it. What once made QM effective is at risk of being forgotten:

1. Enablers are becoming an end in themselves
2. Quality is becoming a vague stand-in for “goodness”
3. QM is losing its unique selling point

Let’s rewind:
QM began as a way to ensure product quality. Through sound reasoning, we discovered that stable processes lead to higher quality outcomes. So QM focused on process stability — and started drifting from the product itself. Then came ISO 9001: well-intentioned, but less empirically grounded. QM began to focus on systems and certification. Again, product quality took a back seat. More recently, leadership quality, purpose, and culture have taken the spotlight — again, valid topics, but again further away from the product. And today? Many QM professionals — and even more executives — struggle to define what QM is actually for. The only message that cuts through is this:

“QM = Certification + Evidence Generation”
And that’s a hard image to escape from.

No Focus = No Impact

The scope of QM keeps expanding — encouraged by trainings and even some interpretations of the ISO norm. Under “Total Quality Management,” QM now tries to cover:

• Sustainability
• Leadership
• Process efficiency
• Organizational resilience
• Life quality
• Employee satisfaction

All worthwhile topics — but if everything is called “quality,” QM becomes “management for good” instead of a discipline with sharp focus. At that point, the quality manager is positioned as a better CEO. But if that were true — they’d be CEO. One principle has stood the test of every management trend:

Focus creates impact.
For companies. For individuals. And for QM.

The Solution: Focus on Customer Satisfaction

All the puzzle pieces fall into place if we define QM as: Everything that measurably contributes to product quality in the eyes of the customer. According to the entrepreneurial quality definition (RWTH Aachen, 2006), quality is the overlap between what the customer expects and what they actually receive — including price. That’s where satisfaction lives. That’s where willingness to pay increases. And that’s where value is created. But here’s the key: Quality managers don’t create quality — value-creating processes do. QM can only influence these processes — ideally through consulting, enablement, and empowerment.

Every QM project should aim to disappear into regular operations — led not by QM, but by the line. Ideally, QM becomes redundant over time. But because products, markets, and people are always changing, the value of QM never really expires.

How to Prioritize QM Work That Matters

It’s not always obvious which initiative actually improves customer satisfaction. That’s why we need methods that help us estimate and prioritize:

→ Planning Poker
Use it to estimate both the effort and the potential quality gain of initiatives. The ratio defines your priority. Limit work in progress to avoid overload — and focus on finishing, not just starting.

→ Agile Thinking via Lean Startup
Use the Assumption → Metric → Experiment model:

1. Assumption: “We believe this initiative will delight customers.”
2. Metric: “At least three customers mention this positively in our survey.”
3. Experiment: Start with the smallest test possible. If it works, scale.

So What Still Counts as QM?

• ‍ISO 9001 Certificates?
  In most companies, there’s no clear link between certification and customer satisfaction. That’s compliance, not QM.
• ‍Management Systems?
  They’re only part of QM if they help deliver better products. Otherwise: compliance.
• ‍Process Efficiency?
  If customers are willing to pay for it (e.g. fast service), yes. If it only reduces internal costs, it’s process management.
• ‍Leadership, Vision, Culture?
  Important — but they belong to general management, not QM.
• ‍Internal Improvement Projects?
  Only those that improve customer satisfaction belong to QM. The rest? That’s operations, IT, HR — or maybe “in-house consulting.”
• ‍Small Companies?
  If one person wears both the compliance and QM hats, they should spend minimum energy on compliance — and focus as much as possible on value-adding quality work.

The Vision: The Value-Driven QM Professional

Imagine a quality manager who can:

• Identify the most effective projects for improving product quality
• Lead change in an agile, data-informed way
• Embed improvements directly into operations
• Prove the impact via measurable increases in willingness to pay

That’s value-creating QM. Such professionals wouldn’t have image problems. Their training would resemble a specialized degree, not a certificate. Their work couldn’t be outsourced or replaced. Their salary? Six figures — because they drive real business outcomes. Standards like ISO? Optional — not essential.

Epilogue: The Future of ISO 9001

The current ISO 9001 standard is technically sound. Certification once helped align global expectations. But the system behind it is breaking down — incentives and oversight are misaligned. In the next 10 years, ISO 9001 certificates may become irrelevant. Why? Because platforms like Google Reviews, Kununu, or Amazon ratings already offer more meaningful signals of trust and quality than any audit ever could. Trust may shift to decentralized, immutable platforms (blockchain?). If and when that happens — QM will need to stand on its own.