Quality: Big Q, Little q, Really Big Q

ARTICLE: Quality and The Three Conversations, by Roberto Saco, ASQ President, Quality Progress Magazine, July 8.

Instead of taking on an operational definition of quality, Saco took a more indirect approach in describing three categorizations of quality he referred to as Big Q, little q and Really big Q …   “Think of it as a progression from the quality of products and services to the quality of management, and now to the quality of life itself.”

The Really Big Q is a needed direction for ASQ. When I first joined ASQ in 1991, quality was thought of as just relating to manufacturing areas only.  The quality Leadership Paradigm and Framework represents one of the better approaches for supporting “Really Big Q.” 

…  little q has to do with the problems of production and the tactical tools that lead to control and improvement. Big Q was Juran’s way of describing quality in a management setting: more strategic, more comprehensive and systemwide—in other words, quality management. It was in Juran’s genius to recognize that these are two different conversations. That they apply different languages, in different domains: the shop floor and the board room. And the two conversations, little q and big Q, are indeed complementary. You need both to make quality real, to make quality stick.

 …  What is really big Q? Beyond quality control and quality management, we need a better, more coherent conversation around sustainability and responsibility, and we need to do so at a higher level than just the organization or the firm. This is quality at the level of entire social systems, where issues like global warming, business ethics, sustainable economies, ecology and reciprocity are addressed. These are the issues of today.