Book in brief: The Power of LEO

The Power of LEO: The Revolutionary Process for Achieving Extraordinary Results
By Subir Chowdhury
McGraw-Hill £19.99
Subir Chowdhury says that for quality improvement to be effective, a quality mindset must be embraced by every employee. “Quality” must also be embedded throughout a firm’s culture – a company must listen to customers, enrich its product offering and optimise the customer experience.

Here’s a synopsis:
1. Attaining quality requires the dedication of the whole universe of stakeholders; every supplier and distributor, as well as every manager and frontline worker.
2. Leaders have a special duty to constantly reinforce that message, delivering it in every meeting and by walking the talk and demonstrating their commitment to quality in their own work lives.
3. There’s a straight line between leaders’ policies and the behaviour and attitudes of their workers – and between those attitudes and the company’s quality measures. In an LEO deployment, management needs to build employees’ confidence in themselves and their readiness to take part in the quality transformation.
4. Copying a quality programme that was a smash at another company rarely succeeds.