Read below an interesting interview with Gregor Kita, Director of Area Quality at Iskraemeco who is transforming the company’s quality landscape with his team.
When faced with pain or criticism, it can be tempting to ignore it and move on. However, doing so often means missing out on opportunities for growth and improvement. This is true not only in our personal lives, but also in the business world. In particular, companies with long traditions must be willing to break from the past and embrace new approaches if they want to thrive and grow. We often times experience moments like this in the interactions with customers. There might be a mismatch between what we provide and what customers need. In some other case, they might have an improvement idea – and we need to take a closer look at it; and there are many other such examples.
Director of Quality at Iskraemeco, Gregor Kita, has recently experienced this firsthand. During a project, Iskraemeco team received strong recommendations from a customer. While we could have brushed it off, instead we chose to take a closer look at the shortcomings and explore opportunities for improvement. This experience reinforced the importance of being open to feedback and willing to challenge ourselves in order to achieve growth and excellence.
Through our recent project, we also realized the importance of cooperation and building rewarding partnerships. In the business world, a company is usually both a customer and a supplier, and these roles are complementary. As a customer, we have the power to make demands, but as a supplier, we must listen and react to the needs of our customers. The customer feedback could easily be taken negatively, but it might as well transform into an un-precedented opportunity to improve our processes, relationships with customers, and as a result, bring our solutions and products to the highest level of quality.
Ultimately, success is only possible through collaboration and cooperation. By working together with our customers and building strong relationships, we can achieve more than we ever could on our own. As a company, we must be willing to prioritize partnership and cooperation in order to achieve our goals and provide the best possible service to our customers.
The path to the growth mindset starts with environment where employees feel safe and comfortable enough to speak up, bring attention to potential and existing issues, all with the aim to improve and optimize. Listening to feedback, as well as a willingness to learn and develop, has a direct correlation with higher quality, exceptional solutions and, more importantly, relationships.
Gregor, you have shared your thoughts about the importance of growth mindset for achieving high quality standards. Although it may not be the conventional approach to quality, its importance cannot be underestimated. What inspired you to start taking a different approach?
The most crucial aspect lies in one’s personality: being positive, open-minded, and curious. These personal traits are integral to education and can be learned through examples of good practice. It is essential to bring honesty, openness, and curiosity into business, even if it means taking risks by asking questions or seeking clarification. Consistency is key.
Honesty means acknowledging when you don’t know something and having no problem about asking someone who does. This honesty enables us to support customers in a confident and transparent manner. Customers don’t expect us to have immediate answers to everything; instead, they expect us to understand their needs and provide solutions.
We can take the analogy from school. The teacher expects you to know everything and deliver all the information in order to get a good mark. This system rarely accounts for the fact that not knowing something is a natural part of learning. It leads to negative experiences, demotions, and lingering feelings of inadequacy. In contrast, I believe in constantly seeking solutions and maintaining an open mindset. Personal experience and mindset play a significant role in this matter. The customer understands the complexity of things and doesn’t expect us to possess all the knowledge. However, they do expect us to comprehend their needs, develop and execute solutions, and present them without passing the responsibility, hiding information, or bluffing.
Did you implement any new concrete actions, either in your team or in direct customer collaboration?
We have actively embraced a collaborative approach during audits with our customers, encouraging them to work together with us to identify and validate effective solutions and address any weaknesses. We have shifted our mindset from avoiding or concealing issues that are not pleasant or ideal to confronting them head-on. This change in approach has yielded remarkable results, particularly in external audits and customer evaluations.
SIQ now regards us as a highly mature company that truly understands the importance of quality. They recognize our commitment to finding solutions in partnership with them. Our partners, too, perceive us as a transparent and trustworthy ally, and we have taken it a step further by initiating monthly evaluations with our customers. During these evaluations, we don’t simply close individual recommendations with reports; instead, we present demonstrations by the responsible process owners to showcase how we have resolved the identified issues. This practice provides us with an opportunity to establish ourselves as an authoritative and competent partner that can be relied upon.
Overall, this shift towards collaboration, transparency, and proactive problem-solving has had a significant positive impact on our relationships with both external auditors and our valued partners.
How do the customers experience Iskraemeco’s approach to quality? Did we receive any interesting feedbacks you could share?
Our customers have come to view us not only as a competent manufacturer of quality devices, which is a remarkable legacy and achievement in itself, but also as a comprehensive solution provider. We have transitioned from being perceived solely as a product supplier to offering holistic solutions and services. Our customers now engage with us at a higher level, seeking advice and guidance, which has transformed our role into that of collaborative partners rather than a traditional teacher-learner dynamic.
Most importantly, our partners now perceive us as a responsive and attentive ally, rather than just a robust producer. We have become their sensitive advisors, fostering a deeper level of trust and understanding. This shift in perception carries significant responsibilities and complexities, as we strive to meet their evolving needs and exceed their expectations.
