How 3 aspects of quality can help you build a worthy lifestyle.
“Quality: Let it not alone improve the industries, but also the lifestyle of society.”
A lot has been said about quality by various researchers, practitioners and professionals in terms of its definition, development and applicability in diverse backgrounds from almost every aspect of product-based businesses to service-based businesses. Different industries have defined quality in their own way based on their understanding of and experiences with it.
As a summary of the literature available in the field of quality, quality can be explained in terms of one or more of the following aspects:
- Quality of design.
- Quality of conformance.
- Quality of performance.
That means how well the designer has conveyed his or her understanding of the designed product or service with utmost clarity. Greater design clarity makes it easier for product manufacturers or service providers to ready the product or service for a great experience. When the experience is integrated from design to conformance, the product or service performance is exceptional and appreciated by the community.
Such narratives and fundamentals of quality are used mostly by industries and organizations via various quality tools, techniques and systems—such as check sheets, histograms, Pareto charts, control charts, fishbone diagrams, quality circles, design of experiments and Six Sigma—to improve the quality of their organizations for a greater customer experience.
But these systems and tools weren’t built only to improve industry and organizational culture. They also can be used to improve our lifestyles. Using various aspects of quality improvement, you can create a culture of quality around yourself to live an extraordinary life.
“Quality is a way to live, plan and grow through your life, career or business.”
Create a worthy lifestyle
The worthiness of your life is defined by the experiences you have created for the people around you through your skills. Use these three aspects of quality to create a worthy lifestyle:
1) Quality of Design – Quality Management
Just as a designer tries to clarify every aspect of a product or service in the design stage, you also must define your goals with utmost clarity for exemplary performance during your life. Breaking down your goals into various categories and timeframes helps build a firm understanding of the expectations you have for yourself. If your expectations are defined clearly, you will deliver on your efforts and achieve them. If they aren’t defined clearly, you also know that you aren’t going to live up to your expectations.
First, divide your objective into goals that are long term (five to 10 years), midterm (one to five years), short term (one year) and very short term (days, weeks or months). Next, categorize your goals—such as spiritual, financial, personal or professional—to plan and execute them accordingly. Also create a vision board to realize your goals every day, every hour and every minute.
Dividing your goals into various categories helps provide a holistic view of your life because, to achieve exemplary performance in life, you must balance all necessary aspects of life. Similarly, dividing your goals into various timeframes helps you understand the relationship between your efforts and results, even for small periods, such as what you are going to get after one month or one year of effort. If you have defined aspects of your goals clearly and get results accordingly, this keeps you motivated.
It’s also important to define standard procedures or processes to follow while making your goals a reality. Next, you must understand, define and write down a list of skills or resources you’ll need to realize your goals, and define or understand the process of acquiring, nurturing and mastering those skills or resources.
Preparing the list of skills and appropriate resources is not as easy as it may seem. You must have a thorough understanding of and conduct a self-analysis around questions such as: “What am I the best at? What do I love to do? What skills are in demand currently? What skills could I be paid well for having?”
Doing self-analysis around these questions is known as identifying your ikigai, which is popular as the Japanese secret to a long and happy life, or your reason for being. Various tools—such as psychometric assessments and brain profiling—help to decode your ikigai.
2) Quality of Conformance – Quality Assurance
After the aspects and their respective processes are well-defined and chosen in the design/quality management stage, those defined parameters must be followed to get the desired product or service. Similarly, after setting your goals, creating vision boards, identifying necessary skills and resources, and clearly defining the process by which to achieve them, you must practice them to see the desired results.
After you identify what you are best at, what you could be best at or what could give you a cutting-edge advantage over others, the next step is to nurture and strengthen your skills. Begin by taking a professional course in the desired area. Remember that taking and completing a course just for the sake of getting good academic marks isn’t truly beneficial. You also must apply that knowledge practically.
To get practical exposure in your field of study, consider joining an internship program as a start. To achieve greater heights and gain exemplary recognition, think about how you can solve problems in your surroundings through your skills and knowledge, or by collaborating with someone with complementary skills.
Technology is evolving rapidly due to the integration of digital technologies with other core technologies—such as electric vehicles, self-driving cars, data science and Quality 4.0, for example—and you must collaborate with these technologies to grow your expertise and remain relevant. This will give you a broad view of the applicability of your skills.
3) Quality of Performance – Quality Control
After the product or service becomes ready based on the designed specifications/processes, its actual performance must be checked and verified for its intended performance. You can’t guarantee that a product or service’s performance will align with the intended purpose all the time. Therefore, if any deviations or variations are too outside the practical consideration limits, the causes of such deviations must be identified and eliminated.
Similarly, if you’re not getting the exact results for your goals after following all the required processes, don’t be disappointed. Perform a thorough analysis of the different aspects to understand what isn’t working and improve accordingly.
Whether it is to improve the performance of a product or service, or to improve your skills in a particular area to help achieve your goals, the best way to do it is to connect with individuals from areas of similar and complementary expertise. This will give you a better understanding of the problem areas by way of appropriate feedback mechanisms. Appropriate feedback mechanisms give an individual or organization a deeper understanding of their concerns, the scope of the necessary improvements and the way forward to achieve those improvements.
You are Worthy
You can live a worthy lifestyle by creating a culture of quality through three aspects: design, conformance and performance, or management, assurance and control. Quality improvement is a lifelong journey with small milestones. It’s not a destination. You must understand that, whether it is life, career, business, industry or technology, everything is growing and evolving.
In this ever-growing and evolving technological world, always remain aware of the fact that you are replaceable if you are not constantly upgrading yourself irrespective of where you are in your career. Therefore, constant evaluation and execution around these three quality aspects are needed to have a worthy and exponentially growing lifestyle.
Raunak Gupta is the creator and crafter of Gyaannirudra, a career counseling initiative in India. He is pursuing the fellow program in management at the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India in Ahmedabad. Gupta received a master’s degree in computer-integrated manufacturing from the Samrat Ashok Technological Institute in Vidisha, India.
Reprinted with permission from Quality Progress© 2023ASQ, www.asq.org. All rights reserved. No further distribution allowed without permission. Read more content from ASQ here.
