#QUALITYtweet - An Interview with Tanmay Vora

Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes

I’m devoting this week’s articles to author and blogger Tanmay Vora’s recent book, #QUALITYtweet. I reviewed the book in my the last article. Today’s article is part one of a two-part interview with Tanmay.

Reading the book, I kept thinking how hard it must have been to get across the points you wanted to make and stay constrained by the 140-character limit. Can you talk about your experience writing the book with this constraint?

I have always believed that reasonable constraints can make us more creative. Twitter has taught us all to express ourselves in 140 characters and less. Writing this book was an amazing experience because I was always working against a constraint which led to a deeper thought process and crystallized ideas. It allowed me to think about a topic at its core. I consider #QUALITYtweet as a compilation of my learning on Quality (just like we take notes during a lecture to take only the salient learning points).

The book has three chapters that cover People & Quality, Process & Quality, and Management, Leadership & Quality. Why did you choose these three areas as a main focus?

The purpose of any quality management system is to build a quality oriented culture (internal goal) and deliver exceptional value for money to customers (external goal).

In a knowledge-intensive business environment, people deliver services and products, not machines. Hence they are at the core of the quality equation. Great people deliver great services.

Once you have good people, they need structure and tools to do their job. Processes are tools people use to deliver excellent services. When people consistently use processes, they start conforming to the requirements and expectations. They “satisfy” customer’s needs.

It is only through great leadership that they are engaged and motivated to walk that much needed extra-mile and “exceed” the expectations of customers. Leadership forms a culture in which great people shine and delight customers.

To “satisfy” customer’s needs is quality and to “exceed” them is excellence. These chapters allowed me to share practical ideas on these core areas.

Are there additional “chapter level” areas related to quality that you have liked to have covered but didn’t make it into this book?

I would have loved to also include the following areas in the book and I intend to include them in #QUALITYtweet – Book 2:

Customers and Quality, because your customers directly impact the quality you produce. They are the ones who define quality expectations and hence maturity of quality systems.

Continuous Improvement (of processes, culture and leadership) and how to develop a framework of continuous improvement to consistently deliver exceptional value to customers.

Excellence and Quality, because quality is an ever-changing expectation. Changes in markets and customers perceptions demand constant innovation not only in your core service offerings and how they are offered, but also in the way you approach quality. The key is to ensure that processes do not limit innovation and new ideas.

You also might be interested in:

1. #QUALITYtweet – An Interview with Tanmay Vora (Part II)
2. #QUALITYtweet – A Book Review
3. Intersection of Reflection Leadership and #QUALITY
4. Just Ask Leadership – An Interview with Gary B. Cohen
5. Just Ask Leadership – An Interview with Gary B. Cohen (Part II)