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You probably have heard it said many times, "Quality is an attitude." This is correct.

Quality, safety and housekeeping all go together. One of my favorite tricks when I interview people for a position working for me is to have a quality discussion with them, and then, politely ask if we may walk out to the parking lot and look at their vehicle. I'll even go look at a rental vehicle, if they happened to fly in for the interview.

In my experience, I can tell after a person has driven a rental vehicle as few as thirty miles if they have a housekeeping problem and hence a quality problem.

Attentiveness and participation in quality principles cannot be turned on and off at the mill gate. There will be people who will tell you they can do this--and my advice is don't believe them. They can't really do this because quality, safety and housekeeping simply involve having high standards in all aspects of life. In fact, we can probably throw a couple of more attributes in there--courteousness and fiscal responsibility.

Whether a person is raised with high standards or has an epiphany which changes them into a high-standards person (which I believe is possible, because I have seen it), high standards follow them throughout all of their days and nights.

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It is good to be able to tell the ones who are faking it from those who are living it. How do you tell? Watch how they behave both at work and outside of work. Now, unlike some folks, I believe the sales profession is a noble profession (if we don't have sales, we can't spin the invoice printer), but I have to admit I have seen more faking of quality standards among sales people than anyone else.

Here is how it goes. Enjoy a good meal with a high powered sales person, who will be dressed just right for the occasion. You will notice the care with which the wine will be selected. Maybe the first bottle will be sent back. These people examine their utensils and polish them up with their napkins. They examine the food, and when the waiter comes back to see how the food is, they may have some comments.

Go to their homes. The lawn, maintained by others for them, will be putting-green quality. The home will have the latest in appliances, the quietest dishwasher, the latest in sound systems and on and on and on. At the meal, at their home, they will tell you quality is important to them. They actually will volunteer this. I remember one such character who had moved from his home locale to the town where I lived. He moved into a new home. On one of these "quiet dishwasher" strolls around his house, he stopped and showed me the molding around a door. There were a couple of slight hammer dings where, when they set the finish nails, they had bumped it with a hammer and left a little indentation. He looked at me and said, "See that. They just don't build houses here like they do in my hometown."

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Go to that person's office the next day and work on a joint proposal. You will hear the stuffing in of all kinds of weasel words to make wiggling out of poor work by his or her employer easier. You may even hear that too much quality is expensive. And this comes less than 24 hours after you were shown microscopic bumps in a door molding.

Fake, fake, fake. Such people are high quality as long as someone else is doing the work. Run from these people. Never hire them. If they work for you, never trust them and start quietly planning their exit.

People who believe in quality produce quality themselves. When it comes to people who do things for them, they will attempt to mentor them and help these others raise their quality attitude to a high standard. Of course, eventually, if their subordinates do not get the message, other plans will need to be made.

I hope you have high standards and hence, high quality standards. It makes life easier because you are not constantly making excuses or redoing things because they have been done correctly the first time.

Where are you on the quality scale? Please take our quiz this week here.

For safety this week, I have already said it above. Safety and quality are 24/7 attributes; no excuses.

Be safe and we will talk next week.

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