Life Coach - Step 34 of 100 - What is quality?

"What is quality?"
While studying in College of Military Engineering, Pune, an instructor asked this question to the class. My answer was Quality is conformance to requirements / delivering what you promise.

He quipped, so I invite your family for dinner and serve you hot food as soon as you get in the office and 20 minutes later, when dinner is served and we are done with eating, I ask you to leave. Since he had only invited me for dinner and served me a good meal, he has conformed to the requirements and hence there is nothing else for him to do.

Was he correct in his thinking? What was the wrong premise that he rested his argument on?

Quality is conformance to requirements. However translation of requirements to end user needs is difficult, because requirements are both explicit and implicit.

Explicit requirements can be easily translated into metrics. For e.g.

• I need a vehicle with a good fuel efficiency. This translates into 10 miles per gallon, 14 miles per gallon, 28 miles per gallon, etc.
  
• I am willing to buy a vehicle from a new market entrant (say Hyundai in US) but I am afraid of the quality of the vehicle since it is not road tested. This quality requirement of mine translates into me seeking a warranty of 1,00,000 miles or 10 years whichever is earlier.

What is difficult is the implicit requirements. So if you invite me for dinner, I expect the dinner to be the explicit requirement, but the time spent together, the scintillating conversations, the repartee is the implicit requirement. This is never quantified but is actually what would ensure that we meet again for a meal. Maybe if the meal was okay - less menu options on the table, not my favorite dishes would really not matter if the implicit requirements were met very well.

How do you define quality in your work? What is your definition of a quality PT period / drill period / weapons cleaning / firing / field exercises / administration? How have you defined your explicit and implicit requirements for each? And have you communicated the same to your men?

Another way of looking at it is hygiene factors and motivators. Where do these fit in? I will cover this in near future.