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Total Quality Management is a process that continuously seeks improvement in the performance of all the processes, products and services of an organisation. It emphasises the importance of the measurement and documentation of results, the understanding of variation, and the involvement of employees at all levels of an organisation. It maintains that, ultimately, management plays a key role in reducing waste and error through the design of the processes of the organisation, and states that most waste and error can be attributed to faulty process design. TQM applies to all organisations, large or small, whether they are in the manufacturing or service industries, private or public sectors. Seven key areas need to be considered as part of TQM. They are:-

• Your customer
• Yourself
• Your staff
• Information on your business
• Your business plan
• Your business systems & processes
• Your business results

I am going to take a brief look, not necessarily in the above order, at one of these in this article (and others in other articles over the next few months).

Yourself

Points to ponder:

• How are you leading your staff (if any)?
• Are you setting a clear direction?
• What goals have you set?
• How do you and your business support and involve yourselves in the local community?
• Stress is a major factor in the failure rate of small businesses.
• A major source of stress is poor time management.

Efficiency & Effectiveness

"Good time management doesn’t just mean getting more done in your available time." Efficiency is concerned with methods - it means getting more done each hour, day or week, resulting in decreased costs for the same amount of work, or more work done at the same cost. Effectiveness is concerned with results - it means doing the jobs that are most important. This requires planning and setting of priorities in the use of work time. To focus only on efficiency (activity) and ignore effectiveness (results) might mean doing the wrong things in less time!

Improving Your Time Management