On Planning, again...

We are approaching midsummer and I have just begun a new leadership position within ASQ. As of July 1, 2008 I am the Section Affairs Council (SAC) Chair for 1 year. This is a role that I've been working toward for the past year (and in truth, have aspired to since I joined the SAC and the ASQ Board of Directors). In my first post here I said that I was fulfilling a commitment of becoming a blogger. Well, as SAC chair I have also made several commitments including:

1. Guiding several Regional Directors to reducing the size of their regions by splitting them into 2 regions;
2. Improving the leadership development in conjunction with my counterpart in Divisions, Steve Wilson, Division Affairs Council (DAC) chair;
3. Improving communications between SAC and other units within ASQ and
4. Improving the planning for the business conducted by SAC by developing and managing a functional business plan.

We are on our way to fulfilling these commitments. The business plan is almost complete and in Sep we will have an RD orientation / training event. Part of this event will include the beginning of development of a plan for the following fiscal year (9 months before it needs to be executed). The Structure team is working diligently to identify needs for reducing the size of 4 regions and developing 4 new regions. At the end of the month I will be meeting with Steve Wilson and several ASQ staff members to begin the planing for leadership development activities. And, finally, at our first SAC call of the year we invited the Certifcation Board Chair to speak.

Okay, so why am I telling you all this and what does it have to do with 'David on Quality'. Well, if you followed the discussion above you will see a common thread. That thread is planning. Preparing for any quality related event requires planning. We cannot just jump into a Kaizen event, we cannot initiate SPC tools without a clear purpose, we cannot become a Six Sigma organizaiton without a clear plan of where we are and were we would like to be and we cannot audit an organization without an audit plan. So, my friends, I leave you with this simple thought...Planning is the linking key to all improvment.