Quality, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder. Is our pious aspiration of wanting to excel in everything we do ever likely to become a reality, or are we just deluding ourselves to appear progressive and smart?
My first understanding of what quality implies came when I watched the popular TV series Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width of the late 1960s. For those who are not familiar with this series, this is a hilarious comedy in which two unscrupulous London backstreet tailors palm off customers with cheap material instead of the good stuff to make their suits.
The pursuit for excellence is a weapon of every country and business strategic armoury trying to boost growth and profits. A country’s brand is enhanced if it excels in one or more aspects of what it does or produces. Switzerland is renowned for the quality of its watches and its health services. Italy is renowned for the excellence of its design and the quality of its food, but certainly not for the quality of its politicians.
It seems that we still do not know what we want to be renowned for. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that even our ġbejna (cheeslet) and ftira (Maltese flatbread) will gain any international hallmark of excellence anytime soon. But this does not mean that so many business and political leaders have lost their insistence on defining Malta as a centre of excellence for various activities.
Living in Malta for even a few months is long enough to help one assess whether our search for excellence in what we do will ever give the desired results. I have often complained about how we are ruing our beautiful coastline by letting caravan favelas crop on almost every stretch of flat public land on our coast. This is no way to enhance the visual image of our shores.
Complaining to law enforcement authorities to stop the madness of petrolheads and Valentino Rossi wannabes using our roads as a racecourse rarely leads to definitive action being taken.
We are still far off from being credible in projecting our collective ‘Made in Malta’ brand as a guarantee of quality and excellence
Some may think that this is a cute pastime that makes some parts of Malta look like Monte Carlo on grand prix day. Many others believe that this is just another sign that law enforcement officials have no will to ensure that the laws are respected by everyone and at all times.
Another major obstacle that prevents us from ever being taken seriously when we say that ‘Made in Malta’ is a guarantee for quality is how we manage our urban and rural environment.
A foreign resident who returned to Malta last year after an absence of 10 years from the island told me how disappointed he was when visiting some of our old towns and villages. The craze of pulling down old houses in the village cores seems to have no limits. Mistakes in urban planning cannot be corrected. They are a permanent disfigurement of our architectural heritage that, up to a few decades ago, was one of our bestselling points.
Of course, there is no lack of rhetoric about the importance of embedding quality in everything we do. Business schools keep teaching the principles of total quality management to our young business students.
I still have to read a strategic plan of a business that does not guarantee the quality of service or products to its customers. I have also stopped being shocked by how brand promises remain unfulfilled in the real world outside organisations’ boardrooms.
One of the tag lines that I like is that of IBM, which a few decades ago decided to alter its business model. IBM decided it was time to move from being a giant in building computer mainframes to providing consultancy services to companies struggling to make the IT revolution work for them. The IBM tag line read: “There is a difference between knowing what needs to be done and knowing how to do it.”
Universities can teach you the elements of total quality management in business.
They can never make you a leader. To achieve quality in what we do, we need societal leaders that mean what they say. Inspirational leaders can convince the majority of the people they lead that determination, hard work and perseverance can help us achieve excellence in specific human activity areas.
While some of us continue to excel in their careers and professions, we are still far off from being credible in projecting our collective ‘Made in Malta’ brand as a guarantee of quality and excellence.