“Quality is not an act, it is a habit.” Aristotle (384-322 BC)

Quality has been understood to involve the behavioral side as early as 300 BC based on Aristotle’s very popular quotation.  Quality therefore does not happen overnight.  “Habit formation is the process by which behaviors become automatic.  Habits can form without a person intending to acquire them, but they can also be deliberately cultivated—or eliminated—to better suit one’s personal goals”. (www.psychologytoday.com).  It will take a person 18 to 254 days to form a new habit (Lally et. al., 2010).  Several studies on the soft and hard elements of TQM are rightly logical.  One cannot just focus on the technical nature of quality and expect that it becomes a habit.  The same can be deduced in adopting ISO 9001.

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A common view of many organizations planning to adopt ISO 9001 as their quality and improvement program, is that it is a technical standard and requires an engineer to lead and implement.  The “human” aspects of improvement programs and change are equally important, if not more important, for them to be successful.  Communicating changes to be implemented and the change process itself should be part of the functions of managers, process owners, and the quality improvement teams.  The more employees understand and appreciate the changes to be implemented and the processes, the more effective the implementation will be. 

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Dindo, A. Uy, PhD