Life on the edge is never easy, yet it can be highly rewarding.

As a young engineer, I learnt the value and difficulty of working at interfaces.

I had the job of Quality Manager in a factory making refrigerators, stoves and washing machines. We had inspectors checking parts from suppliers, more inspectors in the workshops (press shop, paint shop, wiring preparation area, and so on), further inspectors on the assembly lines and final inspection to test the appliances before they moved to the warehouse. All the inspectors reported to me. I was proud to have such a responsibility, and very conscientious.

However, as I tried to enforce the tolerances on the drawings I came into immediate conflict with Production. “Our parts may not meet your specifications” they would say, “but look they fit together just fine”. “A Quality problem is a Production problem” I would counter.

I could not win because Production came first in this factory. Therefore, I went outside the factory to seek support and spent a month in Sales, listening to customers. Everyone seemed to appreciate this. Customers were impressed. Sales people were glad to take me on their visits to show how seriously our company took Quality. I learnt a lot, and Production got me out of their way. I felt so welcome that I spent another month with the service technicians, visiting homes to repair our appliances. This also proved very worthwhile. I learnt far more about our products: how people used and abused them, and their real deficiencies. I also learned how to maintain and service my own appliances!

I returned to my Quality role, reformed. In future, I would be less concerned about Finish – everybody worries about this and the factory was more critical than the customers were. I would be more particular about Performance. But our appliances lasted well (typically, five years for a washing machine, seven years for a stove and nine years for a refrigerator). As long as they did not fail under warranty, After-Sales Service could be a good business. I would be more concerned with Legality – I did not want to go to jail. Inevitably, there came a day when Production wanted to use some components without the right Bureau of Standards kite mark, but they had passed other countries’ tests and so I let them go. However, I would draw the line at Safety. I would not pass any product I considered unsafe.

From time to time, we produced a paraffin refrigerator with a fragile burner arrangement. If the customer was not careful, the glass could crack and start a fire. In one case, the unit had blown up and killed someone. Production responded that the customer could not have read the instructions or taken heed of the warning stickers. Nevertheless, I decided to stop the production line.

My unilateral action was unprecedented. I saw it as a moral conflict and took the dispute over the head of the Factory Director. But when I complained to the Managing Director that “expecting Quality to report to Production was like asking auditors to report to the bookkeepers”, he replied that he was an accountant and lacked the engineering background to adjudicate a technical matter.

I thought I would be fired. Instead, I was relieved of my Quality role and made responsible for Refrigerator Development with redesign of the paraffin refrigerator as my top priority. I felt betrayed and that I had failed. Yet, in less than four months, we had redesigned and re-tooled to eliminate the defects I had been complaining about for months. Production that year increased by 17 per cent and the cost of warranty service fell by 20 per cent.

Only later did I begin to understand that Quality is not one person’s responsibility but, in the jargon of Total Quality Management, “Quality is everybody’s business” and we all have to “Build Quality in, not inspect it in”. Quality is a property that does or does not emerge at the interfaces between Company and Customers, between functions like Marketing, Product Development, Production, Sales and Service.

People whose networks span structural holes have early access to diverse, often contradictory information and interpretations. This gives them a competitive advantage in delivering good ideas. This is not creativity born of deep intellectual ability. It is creativity as an import-export business. An idea mundane in one group can be a valuable insight in another.