Procedures versus outcomes in quality management

Introduction
Imagine the following situation: you enter a public building, and in the middle of the entrance hall a small amount of water has been spilled. Next to it is one of those characteristic yellow signs ‘caution! wet floor!’. The amount of water is really limited, and you wonder why this has not been taken care of, because getting a sign and placing it there requires about the same amount of time as cleaning the floor. When you return from your meeting, the sign is still there.
This problem appears to be a rather simple one, but in large organisations, solving it requires a great deal of creativity. The cleaner may just have left for home or only comes every other day; the receptionist needs to make sure he doesn’t miss calls and is present when visitors enter the building; the accountant assumes someone else will clean it; and the secretary does not count cleaning floors as part of his job. Only when the organisation’s director-general walks in, sees the water and gives the order to get it sorted, does the floor finally get cleaned.
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