Back in the 1980s, New York City Mayor Ed Koch was famous for asking "How’m I doin’?’"

Said to be a rather confident man, conjecture was the former mayor asked this question to engage his constituents rather than wanting feedback on his performance.

However, evaluation and feedback are important to just about anything we approach with a process, and quality is no exception.

Another famous figure, UCLA men’s basketball coach John Wooden, once said, "Without proper self-evaluation, failure is inevitable."

Not only is evaluation important, but also our approach to evaluation. Legendary business guru Peter Drucker said, "Unless strategy evaluation is performed seriously and systematically, and unless strategists are willing to act on the results, energy will be used up defending yesterday," suggesting evaluation, without dwelling on it, is how we move forward.

One more aspect of evaluation to consider comes to us from one of the greatest thinkers of all time, Albert Einstein (Time. Get it?!). Einstein said, "Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count, everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted," suggesting that while not everything can be measured, it is important to measure all that we can. At least all that we can that has been deemed important to our process.

With all this being said, it is not difficult to understand why countless best practices, guidelines, and standards for process control have been created, developed, tested, and tweaked, particularly in manufacturing and quality control. It’s actually quite apt that much energy has gone into evaluating our evaluation processes (Quite meta).

Consider ASQ CEO Sid Bhatnagar, who writes, "Imagine a business operating with clarity, confidence, and consistency—where quality systems align with goals, stakeholders trust decisions, and teams continuously improve. For organizations committed to excellence, external audits serve as a vital tool to strengthen performance, refine systems, and elevate credibility." Or ASQ member Mike Villa, who writes, "Maintaining the 19 ASQ certification exams involves hundreds of SME volunteers annually as well as a dedicated staff within ASQ to keep the exams current, accurate and fair."

So, check out Sid and Mike’s articles, "Organizational Excellence Through External Audits," "Upholding Excellence: ASQ Certification Development Process," and everything else we have to offer in this month’s Quality.

Enjoy and thanks for reading!