The Conscience of Quality
“Every judgement of conscience, be it right or wrong, be it about things evil in themselves or morally indifferent, is obligatory, in such wise that he who acts against his conscience always sins.” Thomas Aquinas
“You are not the determiner of Quality. You are the Conscience of Quality.”
That is what Tom, the Executive Vice President of the company told me as we had lunch to discuss the state of Quality in the company. “So who is the determiner of Quality?” I asked. “The Product Managers are” he replied.
“Just remember what a conscience is” I replied. “It is something that you can choose to accept or ignore. And if I am ignored, do not come to me and ask what happened when something goes wrong. You decided to ignore me.”
He was not happy with my answer.
In fact, he wasn’t happy with our entire discussion at lunch. It had started with him telling me, “Do not f..k with my people.” Pretty direct and certainly antagonistic to say the least.
As Director of Quality Control I had quarterly lunch reviews with all of the company executives and the Product Mangers to discuss where our quality was at. It was something my predecessor started and I continued it.
Just prior to this lunch with the Executive V.P. I had tangled with one of his Product Managers. Fred thought he was smarter than everyone else and basically did whatever he wanted to do. He rarely checked with Quality on his product development and skirted a fine line on the quality of his products.
The factory workers complained to me about this and I raised it with my boss. He told me to send him my thoughts which I did. He then sent them word for word to Fred and his boss, the Executive V.P.
I returned from a trip and was checking my voicemail.
I had one from Fred, cursing up a storm about the memo Roger had sent him. I went to my mail and there it was. Written for Roger’s eyes and sent to Fred.
I called Fred to explain. He calmed down and we agreed to work more cooperatively. That day I had lunch with his boss, Tom and that is when the fun started.
It didn’t end there.
Fred lied and continued to do his own thing which finally led to the first recall of a product in company history. It was a product with batteries that overheated and burned 10 children. We recalled all of the product from the stores, stopped shipments and checked every product in our warehouses. We also had to file with the CDC because the recall involved a children’s product.
It was a mess. So much for Fred being a responsible Product Manager determining Quality. And to Tom for not listening to the conscience who said Fred would be trouble and needed to be reigned in.
“ A crisis of conscience is a situation when people are confused between right and wrong.”
Ultimately Tom had me removed as head of Quality.
Apparently that is what you do after ignoring your conscience. Dismiss it. I went to work for Roger in another capacity. He told me I should be relieved not to have to deal with the quality nonsense anymore.
I then heard that another of Fred’s products had to be recalled. It was a smock that had lead paint on it that was peeling. Children could then eat the paint and get sick or worse. I went in and told Roger about this. To my amazement he said, “I thought you had taken care of all of this.” I responded, “I did till you and Tom had me removed as the head of Quality.” Imagine him saying something so stupid. But such is corporate life.
“Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking”. H. L. Mencken
I never regretted what I said or did as Director of Quality.
There were those who couldn’t handle the truth. That was their problem. And if they backed a screw up like Fred over someone doing the job they said they wanted done, then so be it. A good conscience is just that and will always be so whether one wants to listen to it or not.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter H. Christian was a founding partner and president of espi, a business consulting firm in Northeastern PA. Previously he was an Executive at Crayola Corporation. He has worked with 300+ clients in business development, profit improvement, operations, IS selection and implementation, and Project Management. He has 40+ years of experience in strategic and facility planning, CI, lean, and supply chain. He has helped companies to realize millions of dollars in cost reductions and profit improvements adding and retaining thousands of jobs. He has authored the Amazon bestselling business books, “What About the Vermin Problem?” and “Influences and Influencers” (4 out of 4 star review on Online Bookclub) and is published in a variety of professional magazines. He is most appreciative of Dr. Rodney Ridley and Donald Schalk of the O’Pake Institute, Alvernia University for their support in allowing him to teach this important course
