The Quality Industry Voices

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Now that my hair has turned gray, I periodically think back and consider “what if …” What if I had chosen a different major in college? What if I had not taken a specific job opportunity?

2.0 — I’m guessing that just by writing this number, in this format, many of you know where I’m heading.

Having conducted well over 700 audits, there are some patterns that have developed that are interesting to note.

Over the years, I have seen firsthand that there seems to be no shortage of opportunities for quality professionals to become an irreplaceable member of an organization if they are highly skilled in resolving issues.

In the quality industry, dealing with big data can feel like battling extraneous detail and being ever vigilant against poor assumptions. With millions of points of data, we can be overwhelmed by what is important and what is not.

Information, knowledge, confidence, and an appreciation of risk and reward are important in quality.

Quality professionals quickly learn that they need to deal with a barrage of situations where their expertise is required to intervene, provide perspective, or in some cases lead teams to come up with a solution.

Why do we remember the past, and not the future? It’s an interesting question in that it is thought provoking.

I have been an ASQ member since 1990 and have served continuously as an ASQ member leader (aka volunteer) for 30-plus years. One of the many benefits of volunteering is the opportunity to observe, up close, how ASQ goes about practicing what it preaches.

For many successful men and women in all walks of life, the key to success was that they were motivated more, at least in the beginning, by what was needed, or by what they felt they had to do, than thought of financial gain.