Your World of Influence - Sneezing and Spreading the Improvement Virus

This chapter discusses the importance of finding thought leaders in the organization, those sneezers or informal leaders who garner respect and can change an organization without a fight. The quality manager must put on his or her best consultant hat and step out of the limelight to encourage a non-quality person to step up and be an example for the group. Managing by influence employs the following: using champions, engaging upper management, ensuring annual goal commitments and obtaining executive team participation. Having a champion for software quality engineering activities is an absolute for communication. Champions of each key process area are also responsible for process documentation, improvement, and training. Upper management has many responsibilities, of which advocate and champion interfaces are parts. The chapter presents the checklist to determine who the influencers are in the organization.