The
Risk – Quality – Innovation Dynamic
Paul
writes this month in response to an ASQ survey of teens interested in pursuing studies in Science,
Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) which indicated that “nearly
half of students are afraid or uncomfortable about failing”; an interesting and
maybe even concerning finding. To put
this into some context, some survey detail was provided. Survey participation was by email invitation
to American youth for a week, just after New Years 2013. The teen response group with the afore
mentioned concern about failure was comprised of some 500 kids between the ages
of 12 to 17 years.
Count
me as suspicious.
My
first concern is that most 12 year olds would be in or around grade 6, most
have either not started, or just started going through puberty. Many would still call them children. Seventeen year olds, on the other hand, are
either high school juniors or seniors some (but certainly not all!) of whom are well on with developing a perspective of a world
beyond themselves. It is hard to believe
that those two groups would have anything in common, especially any notion or
sense of academic failure. Second, in my
experience, many (most?) teens despite angst about acne and popularity and
Facebook still see themselves as pretty much invincible.
So
while I haven’t had the opportunity to look at the study design thoroughly, let
me just say that I would be uncomfortable making very many generalizable
comments from a small population sample size.
Said another way, recognizing the ISO definition of risk as the effect
of uncertainty or lack of information on an activity or outcome, accepting the
study’s headline as truth would be pretty risky business.
Having
said all there is another question asked and that is about how well or unwell
Quality folks deal with failure in their own situation.
Over
the last while I have been writing on this theme from different directions (see: [
Invention and Innovation and “new knowledge” ] and [Even committedQualitologists can make mistakes ].
It
strikes me that the Qualitologists fit into a special place in enterprises; on
the one side we can create the conditions to reduce failure that results from the
problems associated with insufficient information and excessive error. And on the other side we can help optimise
the conditions that allow for innovation to flourish. Use of Quality tools and expertise can help
determine what our customers want and need and what will work for them (think
Satisfaction). Also by promoting a
culture that embraces Quality and PDSA and Continual Improvement can help
promote the processes that lead to opportunity (think Improvement through
Innovation).
All
this got me thinking about Paul’s January A View from the Q “How Do You Define
Quality?”.
So
let me provide another definition for Quality:
Quality is the field
of knowledge and action that provides the dynamic interface to reduce the
hazards of Risk and optimize the opportunities for Innovation.
Does
that fit with your job description?
