Managing for Quality: How to Implement and Manage a Business Strategy of Continuous Improvement

For over twenty years, organizations have been trying to successfully implement Quality or Continuous Improvement initiatives. According to research by the Atlanta Group, only 14% actually get it right. That leaves the other 86% trying and not succeeding in their Quality goals.

Why? What is it that makes Quality so hard to achieve? In most cases, it is not bad implementation, per se, it is bad planning. Organizations know the outcomes they are looking for. However, they spend far too little time strategizing and planning what it will take to achieve those goals.

Managing for Quality, answers the readers question: "How do we create and maintain a successful Quality initiative?" Now in its third edition, the book has been hailed as "the how-to book for business survival and success into the 21st century." Managing for Quality provides readers with the strategy, tactics, and trouble-shooting guidelines to make Quality succeed. Kossoff's straightforward writing style and honest approach clearly gives the reader direction towards what the organization needs to do and how to do it. Further, the book identifies problems before they exist and works with the reader on how to avoid or address them before they escalate to crisis level.

Managing for Quality is a popular book among executives and managers and has been widely adopted internationally by public and private sector organizations in their training efforts. The book is also used in the United States and Europe as a text in college, university, and technical institute management courses.

Leslie L. Kossoff, founder and principal of Kossoff Management Consulting, is the leading expert in quality and productivity improvement for a broad range of industries and clients in the United States and Europe. She has been designing and implementing Quality systems for more than 20 years, assisting such prominent clients as Kraft Foods, 3M, and TRW in the strategy, design, and management of their Quality initiatives. She also actively focuses her attention on the unique needs of small- and medium-sized firms in achieving their continuous improvement goals.

Kossoff enjoys an outstanding reputation as an invited speaker at professional and educational conferences throughout the United States. During her long-term alliance with Dr. W. Edwards Deming, founder of the Quality Movement and the "Japanese Industrial Miracle," she also assisted in his client consultations and his seminars speaking and consulting specifically on implementation obstacles and strategies. Deming declared Kossoff, "Quite simply, one of the best at implementation."

Kossoff has published numerous articles pertaining to managing and implementing quality and productivity improvement initiatives. She is the author of the book Managing for Quality: How to Implement and Manage a Business Strategy of Continuous Improvement. Her forthcoming books include Executive Thinking (Davies-Black 1999) and the Managing for Quality Field Guide.

Kossoff is included in the Who's Who Registry of Global Business Leaders and has been a member of the Judges Panel for the Sterling Award of Orange County. She holds a Bachelor and a Master of Arts degree from San Francisco State University and a Master of Science from the University of Oregon.