Customer Service - Personal/Professional Achievement - Telephone Skills

Quality at the Personal Habit Level (QPHL)

As a professional, your degree of effectiveness on the job can be no greater than the degree to which you are committed to quality in every aspect of your life, personally and professionally. In other words, quality at the personal habit level (QPHL).

What, exactly, is quality at the personal habit level and how do we achieve it? The answers, like so many other things in life, are simple, but not easy. The “Quality Movement” has matured, yet “quality” remains an elusive concept. However, QPHL is neither elusive nor vague; we define it as “A constancy of commitment to progressively attaining worthwhile goals.” That is, once you have clearly defined goals for your personal and professional lives, and maintain an on-going program for their realization, you are approaching QPHL. It is essential to remember that QPHL, like any quality process, is never finished – it is on-going, vital and malleable.

So much for the definition of QPHL, but what about the larger questions? How do we achieve it, and are there any secrets to its achievement? Thirty years of working with individuals and organizations all around the world have made it abundantly clear to us that there is a secret – and that secret is that there are no secrets! There are, however, seven specific, actionable steps you can take in the on-going journey to achieving quality at the personal habit level. These steps are represented by the acronym “S.E.C.R.E.T.S.”

The SECRETS, then, to achieving QPHL are…

S. Sense of Purpose: If you accept the definition of QPHL as being “a constancy of commitment to progressively attaining worthwhile goals”, then it becomes evident that a sense of purpose, i.e., goals, is central to achieving quality at the personal habit level.

E. Enthusiasm: Achieving quality in any endeavor involves taking risks, and taking risks involves the potential for failure. Sir Winston Churchill said success is “going from failure to failure with great enthusiasm.”

C. Contribution: It has been said that we can have anything in life we desire (including QPHL) if we will only help enough other people achieve what they want to achieve.

R. Responsibility: Before placing blame in any area of your life, it would be well to recall the words of contemporary success philosopher Jim Rohn, “You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. that is something you have charge of.”

E. Expectancy: Nobody has ever achieved beyond their wildest expectations without wild expectations!

T. Time Management: Time is the single most enigmatic factor in achieving quality at the personal habit level. We have all the time there is, yet we never seem to have enough. How you choose to invest your time is critical to achieving QPHL.

S. Self-development: Nothing less than a total commitment to personal growth is acceptable. As Henry Ford so eloquently pointed out, “Anyone who stops learning is old whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.”

These seven “SECRETS” offer an antidote to the malaise which seems to be poisoning so many aspects of quality in these early days of the twenty-first century. Quality, like charity, begins at home, and the application of ten simple, two-letter words can make all the difference – “If it is to be, it is up to me.”

Roy Lantz is a speaker and seminar leader whose newest book, Never Beat the Boss at Horseshoes… was just published. He is also author of The Care and Keeping of Customers.