Executive Team Commitment

Great companies don’t settle for good culture. They strive to be beyond good, beyond great, they strive to have an ELITE culture. The challenge is to push beyond the typical outline of what is good and to achieve a “best in class” attitude and action that permeates the whole organization.

Recently, the Thought Leadership League conducted a survey of executives asking what factors lead to a good culture. When asked to pick the factors that contribute to a great culture, 86% of all participants selected as one of the most important Executive Team Commitment.

What constitutes executive team commitment? How do you measure commitment?

ISO 9001 says in subclause 5.1, “Executive management shall provide evidence of its commitment to the development and implementation of the quality management system and continually improving its effectiveness by:

a) Communicating to the organization the importance of meeting customer as well as statutory and regulatory requirements b) Establishing the quality policy c) Ensuring that quality objectives are established d) Conducting management reviews e) Ensuring the availability of resources”

The standard also says in subclause 5.5.2, “Executive management shall appoint a member of management who, irrespective of other responsibilities, shall have responsibility and authority that includes:

a) Ensuring that processes needed for the QMS are established, implemented, and maintained b) Reporting to executive management on the performance of the QMS and any need for improvement c) Ensuring the promotion of awareness of customer requirements throughout the organization

The above section of the standard is where executive management often gets confused and is under the perception that the extent of their participation is to pick a person to be a management representative for their ISO system. Every paragraph in section ISO 9001 clause 5 of the standard begins with, “Executive management” and not with “the management representative.” Management commitment refers to all of the executive management (management team) and not to an individual or department.

All American Leadership knows the final process for creating a good culture is unique to each organization because the people are different, however the basic steps are the same. Saying you want to create a “good culture” is a good start, executing a plan to achieve “elite culture” is the goal.

Regularly examining these and other factors more in depth and digging deep can help you to develop leaders who focus on inspiring, empowering and challenging their teams around their organizational purpose to create a focused commitment toward their mission and vision thereby fulfilling their purpose.