The Quality Journey: How Winning the Baldrige Sparked the Remaking of IBM

New York: Dutton, c1993. First Printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. 24 cm, 349 pages. Illustrations. Inscribed by the author. Joseph H. Boyett is cofounder of Boyett & Associates, an Atlanta-based consulting and research firm specializing in helping companies understand and implement state-of-the-art leadership and organizational practices. He has worked with companies such as IBM, BP Oil, Merck & Company, EDS, and BellSouth on leading-edge strategies for securing competitive advantage. Dr. Boyett is an internationally recognized expert and author on such topics as leadership, change management, and high performance work teams. Dr. Boyett is the author or co-author of seventeen books including the highly praised Workplace 2000. Prior to founding Boyett & Associates in 1992, Dr. Boyett was a Principal with the international consulting firm A.T. Kearney. While at Kearney, Dr. Boyett helped establish the company's global Executive Issues Center of Excellence which was responsible for researching leading edge quality and productivity improvement methodologies. Dr. Boyett developed Kearney's world-wide methodology for implementing Total Quality Management in addition to Kearney's internal and client training programs on TQM, The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, and ISO 9000.Prior to joining A.T. Kearney in 1990, Dr. Boyett was Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer of Tarkenton Conn & Company, an Atlanta-based Total Quality Management consulting firm. Extracts from a Publisher's Weekly review: In one of this year's top business books, Boyett and three senior IBM executives ask a complex question: Can IBM--a bureaucratic, tradition-bound and product-driven corporation reinvent itself, become market-driven and win the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award? This volume offers insightful, human details about the daily pressures managers confronted in IBM's Rochester, Minn., facility after their failed 1989 Baldrige application signaled problems with leadership, customer feedback and teamwork. In response, Rochester's managers embraced a plan calling for near perfection in quality and reduction in the time cycles. The plan prompted IBM to launch its ``Market-Driven Quality'' program. In 1990 Rochester captured the Baldrige, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Commerce. This is a well-written, exciting study.