My husband started a new business last year. This wasn’t the first business he had started, but it was the first one in more than 25 years. In his former work, we didn’t talk too much about business or customers or anything work related. But in this new venture he is working at home, and I have had an opportunity to see how he has learned “quality by osmosis.” I do not by any means take credit for all of his focus on quality in his business. However, it is heartening to see the things he has picked up from my years of talking about Dr. Deming, customer service, process improvement, systems thinking, customer surveys and all the other quality topics I get involved in at the Capital Quality Initiative.

So what has this small business owner learned about quality by osmosis?  And what does any small business owner need to know about quality?

Steve (my husband) and a partner started an online pet and animal supply business. For the first time in his career he is involved in a retail company, instead of one providing only service. For an online business he has learned that price may get the customers, but service will keep them.  

First quality corollary for small business:

Price may get the customers, but service will keep them.   

Fortunately, the online business gives the small business owner many tools to know how he or she is doing with customers. With Steve’s Web store, each of his customers is automatically given the option to complete an online survey evaluating his company, the product, price and service. Steve gets reports from these on a regular basis. In a bricks and mortar business (not online), the small business owner needs to establish something similar—a regular and ongoing method for assessing how one is doing with one’s customers. Some companies use followup postcards, phone calls or even e-mails. But the important thing is asking customers how the business is doing.

Second quality corollary for small business:

Ask your customers how you are doing.

Part B to the second quality corollary:

Learn from what your customers tell you.

Any new business starts with a plan (formal business plan or informal idea in your head). But eventually you have to start actually taking, filling and shipping products. Steve latched onto the idea of mapping and flowcharting each of these processes that he and his partner would be doing in the business. Documenting processes with flowcharts or process maps is an excellent quality tool to help the small business owner minimize mistakes (and mistakes = waste = lost revenue). It also enables the owner to improve the process.  

Third quality corollary for small business:

Document your processes, follow your documentation, and improve the documented processes; repeat.
Steve, who was a programmer and analyst in his last career, discovered Microsoft Visio! Now every task he and his partner do is documented. He discovered Microsoft Excel (with a little coaching from me) and now he is starting to chart his progress using control charts. These are some of the tools that the small business owner probably has, but may not be using, to work on establishing and improving the quality in a new business.

In an online business shipping and shipping costs are a given. Steve’s customers love when the product arrives earlier than expected, and they have let him know that. He developed the fourth corollary for business around getting the product to the customer.

Fourth quality corollary for small business:

Promise less; deliver more.

Part B for the fourth quality corollary:

Delight the customer.

Leadership skills in a business with just two partners may not seem important; and yet, that is where those leadership skills get started. One thing Steve learned from living with me is something I learned when working for Ed Souders at Entré Computer Services, many years ago, which leads us to the fifth corollary.  

Fifth quality corollary for small business:

Fix the problem, not the blame.

Dr. W. Edwards Deming said that most problems were due to the system or management, not the worker. In an organization of two, both are managers and both are workers, so fixing blame for problems is a waste of time. Respect, patience, customer focus and an understanding of the goals or mission of the organization are required, whether you have two employees or 200.

I wanted Steve to have a page on his website that talked about his mission and vision. He declined; he called it “eye candy.” So I told him it didn’t matter if the mission and vision were on the website or not, so long as he and his partner understand what their goals are.

So he told me. There is a place in the mountains, near Augusta, Montana, called the Sun Canyon Lodge. Steve and I have spent many vacations there and in the backcountry fishing in the Sun River. And so, you wonder, what does this have to do with his mission or vision?

Steve’s vision for Snow Country Pets, the online pet and animal supply business, is to be able to run the company from a laptop computer at the Sun Canyon Lodge. As Dr. Deming might say, Steve has “constancy of purpose.”

Since his company is still new, I imagine we will be adding quality corollaries as the process of osmosis continues.

		Adrian Bass is the director for Capital Quality Initiative at Lansing Community College. Her husband, Steve Tilmann, and his partner, John Wlodyga, run their Web store, Snow Country Pets, out of their homes in Charlotte and Jackson.