Values Seen Key To Achieving Total Quality

This is significant at a time when some big corporate houses are suffering a dent in their reputation.

ABB Ltd chairman K N Shenoy, management expert M B Athreya, and Godrej and Boyce managing director Jamshyd Godrej, heading the deliberation, insisted that the overall image of an organisation too was important, besides the quality of its products.

Shenoy said everyone dealing with an organisation craved for a feel good factor, which was a direct result of the reputation and business values of the organisation. Corporates must adopt and nurture a set of acceptable business values, he said.

Athreya said Indian CEOs had traditionally placed product quality on top of their agenda, followed by process quality, with values getting the third place.

 

It was time to reorient the priorities and clearly and boldly place values as the principal concern of a CEO, he said.

The entire growth of the organisation must be based on business values; this will earn universal respect, Athreya said.

Making a comparison of the accent on business values in different societies, Athreya said the three core values in the West were: human dignity, result orientation (bottomline) and concern for environment. In the Japanese culture, the values held uppermost were: working together for common good (kyosai), continuous improvement (kaizen) and training & retraining. In the Indian ethos, the values cherished most were: righteousness (dharma), working for social good (loka sangraha) and involvement & action (yoga).

According to Godrej, a CEO must, first and foremost, have in him a set of values for spreading in his organisation. To win respect in society, value-based leadership demanded high integrity and commitment from the CEO, he said.

Good corporate governance has to go hand-in-hand with good products and services, Godrej said.

So what are the other qualities a CEO must have?

Four CEOs Sundaram Clayton managing director Venu Srinivasan, HP India president Suresh Rajpal, Shenoy of ABB and WS Industries chairman & managing director V Srinivasan provided the answer:A CEO must lead by example; he must be able to articulate, communicate and implement a company-wide system for quality. There must be a passion for customer orientation and the ultimate objective was to get to a one-to-one relationship with the customer so that he perceived an all-pervading desire for quality in the organisation.

Besides, a CEO must generate a feeling of partnership with the customer, the employee, the supplier and the distributor.