Hi! I'm Johan (Jo) Kruithof and early in 1992 I established my own company Quality Insights Pty Ltd, dedicated to education, facilitation and consulting in Business Excellence. In 2004, I started to reduce the intensity of my corporate activities and at the end of 2005 I decided to retire from the mainstream of business. However, I believe my philosophy on Quality remains valid, so I'll keep some relevant material on this web site for the time being.

Right from the start, my thesis has been that, to make a meaningful difference, we need to change both the Quality of our thinking and the way we think about Quality. This was reflected in the title as well as the content of my first book "Quality Thinking - Thinking Quality" (1993), and, together with like-minded colleagues, I have continued to develop and promote this message. We have had the privilege of doing so with many and varied organisations, including Melbourne Water, Telstra, Yarra Valley Water, Shire of Mornington, Monash University, R.M.I.T., MITS Ltd, VicRoads, Mars Confectionery, the Australian Army, and Australian Paper. We have also had opportunities to share our insights and experience with students at RMIT and Swinburne Universities, as well as at several TAFE's.

Quite probably you've come across an old saying to the effect that "If you continue to do what you're doing, you'll continue to get what you're getting." Rita Mae Brown put it this way: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Whichever way you express it, the implication is clear: if you want to get something different, you'll have to do something different.

As an example, consider the picture on the right. It is a model, used in various guises by many people over many years, on what to do if you're serious about Continuous Improvement. In this particular version of the model (used in the book "Hidden Gold!"), Continuous Improvement is shown as a combination of Kaizen, ie continuous small step-improvement, and innovation or breakthroughs. There is a well-articulated definition of 'success', to ensure everyone pulls the cart in the same direction. There is application of some form of a disciplined learning cycle and a mechanism for locking improvements in place. The whole thing is supported by a set of solid, well-understood principles (such as customer-focus, leadership, process-orientation, etc).

However, we believe that merely doing things differently is not enough. Our conviction is that to really change things permanently for the better, we need to start by thinking about things differently: "If you continue to think the way you're thinking, you'll continue to do what you're doing!" Unless we make our minds run on different tracks first, any change is likely to be illusory and temporary.

The picture on the left extends the above model to illustrate this: the whole thing needs to be enveloped in a culture of what we call 'Quality Thinking' - a way of thinking about things that challenges many aspects of conventional business "wisdom". Moreover, the basic principles of Continuous Improvement must themselves be part of this thinking - they are not just things to do, they are mind-sets to adopt.