In October 1990, McClellan Air Force Base in the USA received the President's yearly Quality Improvement Prototype Award, owing largely to the base's participation in Project Pacer Share, a new paradigm for organizational design. The project was specifically cited in the President's Quality Award, won by the Air Force Logistics Command in 1991. In this work, two individuals actively involved in creating and implementing the programme examine its development and use at McClellan and describe how such a programme can be applied to the management of organizations, to lead workers to a total quality approach based on customer-focused and process-centred behaviour. The authors offer their own separate perspectives, and also include observations written by other labour, management and non-management participants in the programme.