More about Volunteer Quality

More about Volunteer Quality

Of all the topics relevant to Quality, in my opinion, the singlemost relevant issue is the role of Voluntary Quality.  

As a rule, we humans are best characterized as procrastinators with, of course the best of intentions, but woefully short attention span.  Given the opportunity to do something right (the first time) we generally would like to comply, but then we become distracted and more times than not don’t actually get around to following through.  It’s not that we are an evil or slothful species, we are however, well intentioned, but easily sidetracked with some occasional shining moments.  There are some who might resent my characterization, but with regret, history and the wealth of evidence are on my side.

Many of us over time have tried to keep the ship going in the right direction by building systems and circumstance (police, government and laws, rules, teachers, mothers, standards and Quality Management) to overcome our inherent nature.  It seems that with an aggressive oversight we will tend towards more success.  In the presence of the watchful eye, we are more likely to do the “right thing”.

In my own situation, I personally tend to complicate myself and those around me with push-back, especially if I think the oversight rules, laws, conventions and pressures are artificial and arbitrary.  I always have.  To this day I rarely wear a seatbelt, and generally I consider speed-limits more as guidelines.  (But I digress).  That being said, if I know, understand and respect oversight, odds are that I will be a lot more diligent.

And that brings me to the essence of this posting.  

Recently I have been looking at what it takes for me to participate and commit to a set of standards that can provide insight and guidance within the domain of Quality.  Clearly we are committed to Quality, but we are just like the rest of our species; the chances of our becoming engaged in a system in which we don’t know and understand and respect the rules, and further don’t know and understand and respect the oversight body, then we will likely not follow-through.  We would likely fail to take the document seriously and would in all probability lose interest quickly.  

We are not alone.  Consider that 75 percent of certifications to ISO 9001 fall apart or fail.  For many of the 75 percent who fail, investigation and study indicates there are internal barriers that account for the failure, but I also wonder to what degree the organizations’ respect for their assessment bodies played a role.

Fortunately for us we are part of the remaining 25 percent who continue to be successful after 10 years of participation.  We know and understand and respect what ISO9001:2008 can bring to our table.  

Recently I have been on the lookout of a new standard to supplement our Quality Management system requirements.  We became interested, indeed intrigued with one, which will remain nameless.  

Unfortunately after a lot of investigation and discussion we now understand that the document was written by a process that as best as I can tell without regard to community or consensus or validation, and is written by a group that distains oversight of its own process.  Interesting when I had a thorough conversation with them about consensus and external validation as components of standards development, their response was “We are not accredited and we don’t have to do any of those things”.  

 I know what they are doing, and I understand what they are doing, but it is very difficult for me to find that essential third requirement of respect.  The chances of our having any on-going success would be very limited.  Having a successful first assessment would be a “no-brainer” and I guess we could notch that into our belt as an accomplishment, but the likelihood of sustained follow-through (the true achievement) just wouldn’t happen. 

The search continues.

PS: Recently I learned the hard way what happens when you don’t wear a seat belt.  You get a heavy fine.

PPS: Looking forward to a positive and successful 2014

Who should be Writing Standards?

Who should be Writing Standards

For some of us who spend time being involved in writing standards with various organizations, it starts to take on a certain repetitive rhythm and routine.  For the most part we work our way through even the most complex of subjects and end up with  credible documents in anywhere from 9 to 12 months.  For more contentious areas or new areas, the time may be a little longer, but it would be a very rare situation where it would take more than 18 months.

I contrast that with the initial writing of ISO 15189:2003 (Medical Laboratories – Particular requirements for quality and competence).  I am mind boggled when I think back and realize that the initial creation phase of that document took from 1995 through 2002, a stunning seven years.  Now I know that ISO is supposed to be like the Canadian Senate, the house of “sober [in this context meaning knowledgeable, objective and unbiased] second thought” and that the point of the exercise is not to do it fast, but to do it right; but the reality was that at the end of that seven year journey, we had an interesting and useful, but very flawed document.  It may have been second thought, but I am less sure about the sober part.

Today the need and demand for standards is growing rapidly and the need for a more realistic turnaround time is both required and essential.  

There is however a compounding factor, and that is that many of the people who have learned through the process are starting to be of the “greying” set.  I suspect the median age of standard developers is something close to 55 years with 20 years of experience.  That group is slowly becoming less reliable for a number of reasons.  Many are starting to think about retirement and may want to continue on in standards writing more as a hobby or past-time which is not a good idea.  The problem is that often even though they (we) are still involved in work they may be less involved in innovation and change.  There is a sense that the way we used to it, is still the way it should be done, and that through standards we can perpetuate that approach, even though it is no longer practical or effective (dare I say obsolete).  Worse, as they leave work, their connection with new technologies grows more distant, and their efforts become ever more marginal. 

Respect for age and wisdom can and should have both a “best before” and an “expiry” date.

On the other hand, attracting young people (“kids”?)  early on is not much help either.  Sure they have age (youth) and imagination and maybe idealism on their side, but rarely is it tempered with knowledge or experience or insight.     Standards development requires knowledge, and an understanding of how the world and its sub-sets works.  Standards development requires, indeed demands experience and expertise.  Period.

So where do you find the best of both worlds, young enough to be enthusiastic and open to innovation, but old enough to have knowledge and insight; someone who knows what standards are and how they can and should be used.  Someone who is in a position to likely grow into standards development over a couple of decades.  

And here is the answer: look to the students like those in my UBC Certificate Course for Laboratory Quality Management.  

These are all people with a minimum of 5 years of on-the-job work experience who know what they are supposed to be doing.  Importantly they have been around enough not only to know the right way to get things done, they also have pretty good insights as to what are the wrong ways.  More importantly these are people who self-selected themselves to be interested in the domain of Quality and Standards and Management.  Not every employee becomes interested in those aspects of work; lots of very good employees are “just in it for the money”.  But folks taking extra continuing education programs in the domain of Quality, often on their own time, are much more likely to have the requisite passion to want to do things better, and to be “in it to win it”.  

And these are the ideal folks to be getting engaged in standards development; young enough to be keen, experienced enough to be knowledgeable, and motivated enough to be engaged. 

You can call that the winning combination.