PQS - The Positive Quality Spiral To develop, maintain and control quality at an educational institution and similar types of process organisations (i.e. financial institutions and hospitals) is a relatively easy matter in principle.
It is in fact only a matter of taking one step at a time without spending too much time on each step. It is a question of being down-to-earth and following the laws of necessity as well as ensuring the confidence and the social responsibility, but it is also a question of expressing the results in words and making the "silent knowledge" visible by using a common terminology as a starting point. But primarily you must believe that the people who have the daily responsibility intuitively know in which direction the development should go because of their qualifications.
Developing the PQS, the Positive Quality Spiral, is therefore a learning process, which is created by using a systematic method, where you acknowledge that nobody can do all of it in no time, and therefore you take one step at a time. The development activity is formulated as a personal quality project and is described by means of a specific common systematic method, where each staff member (teachers, technical-administrative personnel, heads) organises and develops a partnership (team) with a colleague. Afterwards the team join a reference group consisting of 3 - 5 teams. On the basis of their projects these teams develop communication and a community spirit to ensure the development and the continuation of the positive quality spiral towards a form of know-how organisation.
The Positive Quality Spiral develops over a period of time. On the basis of the individual quality projects and the whole process the positive quality spiral will form the professional and pedagogical foundation, on which you can build a number of pedagogical, professional and administrative columns, which the educational institution can be founded on as a learning institution.
This method involves several forms of development and spin-off effects, which will be described briefly below as a series of "spaces of development".
The concrete space is the space, where each individual quality project creates results. It could be changes in the teaching, in the curriculum or in the administrative procedures. Consequently, the product and the attached process will both result in the development of individual staff members as well as their environment and the structure.
In the energy space the necessity philosophy of the project and the familiarity with the systematic method of the Quality Spiral are developed. At the same time this space gives you the possibility of analysing and concentrating the energy of the staff by giving each individual staff member the initiative and the energy based on the idea of self-determination. In this way the employees and the management will be set free.
In the transfer space you create the transfer, which automatically gives a development in the daily routines, such as a better understanding of the objectives, the possibilities of evaluation and self-discipline. In addition, you generate a broader and deeper cost-benefit way of thinking, where the traditional financial thinking is replaced by more overall considerations. At the same time the social and the communicative structures of the organisation are strengthened.
In the teamwork space you develop a series of methods of co-operation, which consist of teambuilding based on the concrete co-operation and the social responsibility of the teams and the reference groups. These teamwork routines make it easy to build up and develop teams continuously in different contexts and for different purposes in the future.
The management space provides the possibility to develop the managers´ abilities to deal with the decentralized responsibility, to create the confidence and the understanding that management takes time, when it comes to the development of the staff in a process organisation. At the same time the management space provides an understanding of the idea that management is a function, which changes form and contents in relation to the assignments, the control and the results required.
The development space consists of the conditions under which the individual staff members and the teams learn to tackle specific development assignments, which includes demands when it comes to objectives as well as fixed planning, deadlines and the evaluation of the results based on a cost-benefit way of thinking.
In the organizational space you strengthen the interdisciplinary, interfunctional and interorganizational understanding among the whole staff.
Even though the systematic way of thinking in the PQS is based on quality concepts, such as development, maintenance and control, the PQS model is a bottom-up activity and model of learning in principle. The development begins when each individual staff member solves a specific problem and starts developing. In this way the employees produce the necessary knowledge in a co-operation with other employees.
Erik Laugesen Kristensen. +45 20442397,
e-mail: lak@post12.tele.dk
ass. prof. - lead assessor - lecturer - consultant (management),- writer/ Skaerskovvaenget 2, DK-8600 Silkeborg Denmark
Educational book in Danish used in commercial shools: ”PQS opbyg en Positiv Qualitets Spiral”
