More requirements, less stress

Nick Burkholder

In 1990 I was selected to be a Quality Instructor at Johnson & Johnson World Headquarters.  With the arrogance of relative youth I was looking forward to being a quality expert, to be able to say what was “quality,” and what wasn’t.

At Quality College we learned first that quality was “conformance to requirements” and then I was disappointed to learn that I would have nothing to do with defining these requirements unless I was the customer.

I was reminded of my quality education last week when several organization staffing leaders lamented that they were so busy – and stressed – because of the economy.  “It’s not staffing as usual” and the implications of the economic conditions made them more inclined to jump to take on other tasks to the extent that they we’re unclear about what they were supposed to be doing.

The most powerful implication of the Johnson & Johnson Quality Education System (derived from Philip Crosby Associates) was that it empowered every single employee to demand complete requirements before initiating an assignment or task.  It took some getting used to, by supervisors at every level, but it worked.  And it works now.

Organization leaders may initially bristle when asked to define their requirements but doing so well inevitably garner their respect, enhance your and the organization’s performance and reduce stress.

Here are a dozen sample questions to help you, to help your customer and or boss, to define requirements:

1. What do you want?
2. Why do you want it?
3. When do you want it?
4. What resources may I use?
5. What are the performance standards?
6. What are the satisfaction standards?
7. What business objectives is this associated with?
8. What are the communication protocols?
9. What are we assuming?
10. How do we know this is true?
11. What caused this?
12. What will be the effects ?