What we do

Help people and organizations advance in the sustainable quality revolution

Although the quality revolution started four decades ago and it has helped a large number of organizations worldwide, a deep quality gap is still obstructing human, economic and inclusive social development.

The quality revolution emerged in response to disruptions to transform updated industrial structures and urge to improve management and increase efficiency to meet the needs and expectations of a growing cohort of better informed customers in the Internet era.

The positive impact of the quality revolution was unmistakable and spread fast. Japan was the first country to develop a national resilience program to institutionalize customer satisfaction and the new quality paradigm in management that included the creation of the Deming National Quality Award. The purpose of the Award was to stimulate national productivity, international competitiveness, and economic growth at a time of deep transformation in the Japanese production and economic system. Edwards Deming was the American expert behind the transformation who had developed the acclaimed Total Quality Management model and the quality movement that proliferated from Japan to the rest of the world initiating the global dimension of the quality revolution.

The principles and practices of the Japanese Deming Quality Award were adopted by developed countries in the creation of National Quality Awards and adapting the Deming assessment criteria to match national idiosyncrasies to boost productivity and competitiveness in business and industry.

In 1987 the United States created the Baldrige National Quality Award   In 1991 the European Union created the EFQM Award Numerous developing countries followed. In Latin America Quality Award Programs started in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru in the nineties. The quality revolution had started and it expanded fast.

Education: the missing link in the quality revolution

But education was overlooked and excluded in the initial stage of the quality revolution and many countries are still dismissing education quality as one of the most significant factor in economic and social development.

 National Quality Award Programs were established to support and provide comprehensive quality assessment criteria to business and industries. But education was excluded. This was not unusual because a segmented vision and the isolated analysis of different sectors in the economy and society – as if each sector was self-contained and independent of other sectors – was a characteristic analytical framework in the industrial past that still exists.

Segmented vision and lack of broader correlations and integration are significant obstacles to attain sustainable quality standards. Omitting the impact of education on organization development, in all sectors, curtails the reliability and validity of sustainable quality assessment.

In 2001, McGraw-Hill published the book Management and Quality in Education. A Model for Evaluation. It was the first guide providing integral multisector analysis to attain sustainable quality standards in education. The author was the founder of GIQE , an active participant since the start of the quality revolution. The book was published in Spanish to diminish the more significant quality gap in education in the Region and in developing countries. In 2001 the Baldrige National Quality Award added the education version of the Award.

A decade later, in 2014 Larry Page, Google’s cofounder and CEO, expressed concerns that people are not being educated to meet the challenges we have upon us. He further alerts about the danger of companies and organizations feeling comfortable with what they do and lagging behind changes in the global environment that are revolutionary, not evolutionary.

Dismissal of common quality and enhancement of excellence

By 2010 the quality revolution had become a global landmark and most organizations wanted to be part of it. Although a growing number of organizations in all sectors and worldwide deploy quality methods and use the assessment criteria of National Quality Award programs to attain continuous improvement as irrevocable condition to demonstrate quality according to standards of the new paradigm; some people and organizations have not missed opportunity to take advantage of the prestige attached to quality but ignoring or avoiding the work and efforts required to meet the continuous improvement imperative. To put it simple, the difference is to use quality merely as a qualifying adjective or pure performance versus the principles and standards of the Quality Management paradigm. Misunderstanding and misuse of the quality concept has led National Quality Award Programs and ethical quality management professionals worldwide to substitute the quality word for excellence and sustainable quality® to avoid misleading and deception. Awareness on quality abused is everybody’s responsibility to deter the collapsed of quality under the weight of ignorance and opportunism.     

The start of Human Centered Management in education, organizations, the economy and societies

Excellence can only be achieved by human beings. Common sense illustrates that people are central in the constructive development of the Knowledge Society. And Human Centered Management is an essential condition to leave behind outdated structures and advance to sustainable quality in education and organizations to build robust markets of well-informed consumers in a sustainable economy as critical elements to create an inclusive Knowledge Society

GIQE was a quality innovator at the beginning of the millennium. And it is offering revolutionary innovation and new solutions in management again starting integrating and incorporating Human Centered Management.

Sustainable quality values disruptions that force innovation and improvement. Status quo does not help but increasingly hurts organizations. Innovation is no longer limited to technology, but is increasingly empowered by human potential and human centered management able to transform disruptions in resilience propelled by constructive leadership.  

The person behind HCM and sustainable quality innovation

mtlepeley Maria-Teresa Lepeley is GIQE’s founder, president and CEO. Educator, economist, social entrepreneur, writer and editor.
She started her career as educator and became economist and a human centered management and quality specialist to solve problem in education, foreseen critical need to integrate education in all economic and social analyses.She designs the global programs, research projects and training in Constructive Leadership and Quality teams required to manage disruptions and build resilience to successfully deploy Human Centered Management necessary to attain sustainable quality in education and organizations.
The United States Department of Commerce has recognized Maria-Teresa Lepeley for outstanding service to the Nation as member of the Board of Examiner of the Baldrige National Award.During her five year service to Baldrige she evaluated performance and quality standards in organizations in all sectors that participated in the Program (business, education, health care). She was a main proponent to create a Quality Award for non-profit organizations. The Award was approved and it is now helping and integrating this important sector among the national excellence recognition awards.

Dr. Jürgen Strube, Honorary Chairman of the Supervisory Board, BASF SE in the Prologue of Human Centered Management in Executive Education (Palgrave 2016) 

Thirty years ago, Peter F. Drucker wrote “The Effective Executive”. This book highlights the shift from manual labor to knowledge work and from efficiency to effectiveness. The executive is expected to get the right things done and to get results: not by himself, but for people.This book gives answers beyond Peter Drucker’s “A leader is someone who has followers” and Bill Gates’ “Leaders will be those in who empower others”, it defines leadership as a process of social influence that maximizes the efforts of others towards the achievement of a common goal. We are here at the human side of the enterprise. The book collects evidence how human centered programs in management and executive development have been helping to form the leadership of today. Examples are drawn from fifteen countries in four continents with a unique vision of challenges and achievements.Social responsibility is discussed as an important dimension of business now recognized worldwide. But corporate social responsibility is still far from reaching desirable standards that will benefit business, people, and society at large. There are many examples of great enterprises which are on this track but the process has to become broader and continuous and the book contributes to this objective. It points out that executive development programs must be forward-looking and anticipate the growing challenges leaders face in rapidly changing business environments. My business experience convinces me that Human Centered Management in Executive Education addresses these issues with a very appropriate vision that is timely and relevant.