I posted this on the Slack channel, but I think it’s an interesting topic (I would - I’m biased). We say quality is everybody’s responsibility, but to me, the word responsibility screams mortgages, stopping children from burning the house down and stuff like that. Instead, can/should we rephrase it so that it becomes more of a “why” statement? Could it be “Everybody’s goal,” or “everybody’s aspiration” or “everybody’s dream?” I also worry I’m overstepping boundaries and will upset people by asking the question.
Responsibility implies that the action is dictated from outside. While that is, in fact, true. It does not do much for motivation. That is, as a {someone who this applies to}, I might not be motivated by having this added to my list of responsibilities.
On the other hand, the other statement (…is everybody’s goal, asperation, dream, etc) implies thought that I might not have.
You could clarify it further, to take out the implication, by adding words, such as “should be.” If you should decide to go that direction, you lose the flow of the statement, which was short and somewhat sweet, and you don’t actually change the meaning. Since it “should be a goal,” it then changes to a responsibility, by nature that “should be” implies a responsibility to me. That leaves my thought process back to where it started.
Which is what I was trying to say (somewhat clumsily) - it’s about getting people to buy in to “quality” rather than tell them they have to.