Senior management’s roles in successful improvement programs
For the successful improvement of quality programs, senior management has essential roles to play. The first important role the senior management perform is to develops and employ the mission, vision and the core values of the firm. For example, in (Memorial Hospital And Health Care Center, 2019), the senior leadership of the Memorial Hospital ensured that better mission and vision were put in place to ensure the successfulness of the organization. In the hospital, the senior management also ensured that communication is streamlined within the organization to improve quality. The senior management has a role of promoting legal and ethical behaviour in the quality improvement programs. For example, in the Integrated Project Management Company, Inc, the senior management ensured that legal and ethical behaviour was promoted in the company to enhance quality improvement (Integrated Project Management Company, 2019).
Senior management’s specific role in large-scale strategic quality programs
It is believed that the role of senior management in quality improvement programs can always go beyond the program. A senior manager needs to perform all the stated functions and also be at a position to always navigate through the critical emerging issues in the organization (Powell, 1995). The senior manager also needs to align the stakeholders, capabilities, and to build passion and commitment towards a common goal to allow quality. In short, therefore, a senior manager has a significant role to play in a large scale strategic quality programs to ensure its success and sustainability.
Why firms must adopt the identified roles
Firms must first identify the roles to be played by the senior management to be at a position to provide proper training to the proposed senior managers to gain knowledge to about Total Quality Management. The senior managers trained, therefore, after training can appoint other managers who will be at a position to train other employees. The transition of identifying the roles always helps in cutting training costs, which is always caused by hiring an outside agency or a human resource trainer (Beer, 2003).
The risks of not using the roles
The main risk of not using the roles in an organization is that uncertainty will be created in the organization on the roles every employee need to undertake. Also by not correctly using the roles, the organization risks moving in the wrong direction since it will be lacking good policies and ethical behaviours which are mostly promoted by adequately applying the roles (Beer, 2003). The cost of operation might also be increased because the organization will have to hire an external agency to help in the implementation of the quality improvement programs.
How senior and middle management should drive the metrics to use to monitor and communicate performance
To be at a position to obtain maximum profits from the metrics, it is essential for an organization to keep them as simple as possible. All the employees in the organization, therefore, need to understand the metrics appropriately used, in terms of how they can influence the metrics and what is expected of them. For example, it is easier to state that the target of a metric is to reduce complaints raised per month down to two than having a 50 percent reduction per month. Useful metrics, therefore, will provide the focus for an organization and drive performance in the right direction by producing profitable internal and external public relations.