Community Leadership Institute - CLI

I attended 4 sessions at this years CLI

• Why member experiences matter: the experienntial economy presented by Jen Czajka


• Using community to grow presented by Jeanine Becker


• ASQ's social responsibility initiatives presented by Michelle Mason and Rick Perlman


• Panel Discusion: member unit application of social media tools - panel included Aimee Siegler and Lori Derringer

My take aways from these sessions include:

Steps to begin creating a great member experience are:

1. Identify experiences that amtter


2. Harmonize the positive cues


3. Eliminate the negative cues


4. Mix in memorabilia


5. Engage the five senses

The Gartner Study discusses behaviors in Social Networking.

Becker: many of ASQ's Subject Matter Experts take their knowledge for granted. Everyone knows what they know. They need to mentor those New to Quality.

The Quality Triple Bottom Line includes linkages between ISO 9000, the standard for Quality System Management, ISO 14000, the standard for Environemental Health and Safety Management and ISO 26000, the guideline for Social Responsibility.

There are Seven Core Issues that make up ISO 26000

• Organization governance


• Community involvement and development


• Environment


• Consumer issues


• Fair operating practices


• Labor practices


• Human rights

ASQ is involved with the first 3 above areas.

Wiki's are great tools for document collaboration within a team and can be highly effective for Member Units Leadership Committees. Wiki's can be used to build newsletters, email announcements (e-blasts), meeting flyers, education and seminar announcements, etc.

LinkedIn is a great tool for Business Networking while Facebook is more appropriately used for personal / social networking. As a group it was suggested that Facebook pages or groups not be used by member units so as to keep your personal and professional networking separate.

The day ended with the QMP awards ceremony which included:

• 83 Total Quality Awards for Sections


• 13 McDermond Total Quality Awards for Divisions


• 13 Division Excellence Awards (3 Gold, 4 Silver, 6 Bronze)


• 90 Section Excellence Awards (26 Gold, 33 Silver, 31 Bronze)

Dinner followed the awards ceremony which included lots of laughs with old and new friends.

ITAG at the Community Leadership Institute

ITAG is the Ideas to Action Gathering

For quite a few years now ASQ has provided Member Leaders to opportunities on the Saturday before WCQI. The first, ITAG, is time to address pressing issues that leads to improving our ability to deliver value to our members and customers alike, to engage member leaders in Strategic discussion.

This year's ITAG was centered around ASQ's pursuit of the Wisconsin Forward state Quality Award. The criteria is a Baldrige based. For the 2011 application ASQ is incorporating member units to make this an organization / society wide pursuit. The focus of today's discussion was around Category 5 - work force which shifts from HQ to 'The Society'.

Some take-aways and a-ha moments included:

• Application and feedback reports are always available


• We are all the customers


• Sections should consider applying to their state Awards program


• Have we outlived Quality? Are we more about Business Excellence?


• If I know why people stay in ASQ then I can affect preventive action to retain members


• Members set the conditions of engagement


• Ego is a barrier


• All team members need to support the team

On a personal note, I think it's high time to engage the general membership in these discussions. Asking the same group of people the same time of questions continually leads to the same results. How can we, as member leaders in collaboration with staff, presume to know what members want if we don't ask?

In Pittsburgh, PA for CLI and WCQI

I arrived in Pittsburgh after a long drive at about 6:30 pm tonight. Upon entering the Westin Convention Center Hotel I was immediately greeted by a handful of old friends. One thing I've learned over the years of attending ASQs conferences is no matter what city we are in, we are at home, with our ASQ family.

Dinner tonight was with Aimee Siegler, Herb and Lori Goldstein right here in the hotel at the Orignial Fish Market. The tuna was delicious and the company wonderful.

Tomorrow morning is the start of the Communities Leadership Institute (CLI)...stay tuned...more to come!

The Future of Quality

In a video blog (vblog) on A View from the Q, Paul Borawski posed several questions related to the recently completed Futures Study which addresses the future of Quality from the perspective of business and organizational leaders world-wide. Two (2) questions were asked of me:

1. How do I see the forces playing themselves out in my work and my organization?


2. When I think about these forces, what are the most pressing questions for which I want answers?

The 8 forces as described in the 2011 study are:

• Global responsibility


• Consumer awareness


• Globalization


• The increasing rate of change


• Work force of the future


• Aging population


• 21st century quality


• Innovation

If you've ever been a part of ASQ's World Cafe pertaining to the Future's Studies you know that a review of all the forces in a short time is next to impossible. Hence, I would like to address only 2 of the forces and focus on Paul's first query. The forces I will address are Work force of the future and Aging population as I am currently relating closely to both of these issues.

First I want to state that I am approaching 50...yes, 2011 is a big milestone year for me.

I've been quite fortunate over the past 15 years in that (1) I am technically savvy and (2) I've worked with organizations that embrace technology as a means to do business. That said, I've been in a position to set up a home office and work from that office on a regular basis. Not being in the brick and mortar that represents the Organization has never inhibited the work from being completed effectively, efficiently and timely. The overall benefit to the organization is that time has no bearing on when and how I accomplish my tasks. Being a task oriented person, I've realized that being in a given location for a predetermined period of time does not guarantee efficient use of that time.

My vision of the Work force of the future is one that is fluid and can complete the required work regardless of location, time, etc. In many businesses this may mean being within the brick and mortar but that is not essential to all parts of the company. Telecommuting opportunities must increase, especially with the increased costs of commuting. Furthermore, we've seen over the past 20 years that the 'company man' or 'life employee' is a thing of the past. I believe that more and more, we will see an increase in outsourcing of service functions within and organization including Sales, Customer Service, Accounting, HR, and even the Quality function just to name a few. Why employ average employees when we can outsource such services to talent beyond our organizations means?

With regard to the aging population, I currently work for a company that is about 35 years old. The average tenure of our production force is about 28 years. These employees may not be chronologially old yet but they are getting there and a younger crew is not following behind. As the US becomes a service oriented nation who is going to move into the remaining production environments?

I work with a gentleman named Ed. He is 76 years old and has worked here for 18 years. This is his retirement job. He sold his own business and came to work here in his 50's. What keeps him going, working 30 hours a week. Shear joy of working. Does his age have any bearing on his ability to perform. I say no. He is still teaching me about this business (I've been here for a little over a year now).

As the average age of the US and the world population increases and the size of the younger population decreases how will organizations keep up with the demand for qualified work-force. Again, I believe that the outsourcing of many functions will be the wave of the future.

On the subject of out sourcing I caution that we must consider local / domestic out sourcing before going off shore, regardless of where we are located.