Every manager knows that appearances should match the realities of the business or other organisation. What do users of your products and services think about these offerings and the experience of using them, and, how do these real facts compare with your own beliefs about the standing of the organisation relative to competitors, other comparators and ‘stakeholders’ generally?

In my experience, there is always a meaningful, potentially malignant gap between the inside and outside views. This thought sprang to mind earlier this year when looking at coverage of the chaos at Heathrow’s four-billion-pound fifth terminal - T5, recently described as a 'national embarrassment' for the UK.

Presumably British Airways (the sole user) and the British Airports Authority (the provider) must have used modern methods of project management (which is very powerful). If that assumption is correct, how could the project have gone so disastrously wrong at the most sensitive moment - the first day of actual opening?

Lessons could and should have been learned from the BA engineering business, which introduced Total Quality Management following its worst ever period. Deep unrest among the staff had resulted in a long walk-out. Firmness paid off in the end; the men went back, and the strike was ‘won’.

But the true victory of the management was still to come in the decision to take a vow that such a disaster as the strike would never be allowed to happen again. Hence the basic decision to adopt Total Quality Management. It was a rip-roaring success, both operationally and financially.

The largest area at BA Engineering was Aircraft Maintenance, with 4,000 employees. Its boss, John Perkins, disliked the popular ‘culture first’ approach to corporate improvement. AM had a welter of technical problems, and Perkins put these first. Inspired by a chance meeting at Harvard Business School, he used the services of Kepner-Tregoe, with its formal approach to problem-solving. The consultants’ analysis rested on five questions:

1. Are there any quality issues?

2. If so, how are they picked up and transferred?

3. If they are picked up and transferred, how are they dealt with?

4. If they are dealt with, what working mechanism is used?

5. Is the environment supportive of change and the new behaviours required?

Those five questions, which can apply to all and any parts of an organisation and its processes, are as ‘hard’ as could be. But the process automatically embodies a ‘soft’ or cultural element of great importance and power. Organisational improvement and development are not subtle matters, but based on solid, deeply established principles of behaviour.

It only seemed logical to expect that the Total Quality Management concepts of BA Engineering would be transferred to the other divisions inside the BA organisation. As usual, a committee was duly formed to effect the transfer. And that, so far as I can discover, was as far as reform got.

Maybe the T5 catastrophe dated back to that false step. Total Quality should mean just what it says - total.

You don’t require genius to achieve performance that matches reality to achievement, but you do need to develop true self-knowledge and to apply that vital wisdom.

For more on Total Quality Management, see http://www.thinkingmanagers.com/business-management/total-quality-manage...