QUALITY
Hire a quality expert who is practical and does not live in an ivory tower, or else your billings may nosedive and your entire manufacturing team may end up doing only rework.
In the services sector, quality invariably means an extension of the core job being done. A shipping agent who keeps you updated of the status of a shipment at all times is a delight to work with; so is a dentist who sends you a discreet s-m-s reminding you of your appointment that evening.
To quote Dr. Laurence J Peter and Raymond Hull: “……man cannot achieve his greatest fulfilment through seeking quantity for quantity’s sake; he will achieve it through improving the quality of life, in other words, through avoiding life-incompetence.”
QUANTITATIVE APPROACH
Quite a few times, a team leader has to let go of his quantitative obsession and take a decision off the seat of his pants. A crucial input to decision-making is intuition and gut feel. In turn, intuition and gut feel get sharpened over a period of time by the sheer availability of good quality quantitative data.
QUESTIONNAIRE
A well designed questionnaire is an important tool in any research project. It pays to pre-test one before freezing it. However, in case of behavioural and attitudinal studies, a structured interview approach works much better.
ashokbhatia 