Author: Jeremiah Genest

Quality professional with over 20 years of experience. Gamer and storyteller with forty years of practice.

Unconference for ASQ Team and Workplace Excellence

The Team and Workplace Excellence Forum is excited to be hosting an Unconference, and I am excited to be able to invite you to the workshop at Masary Studios in Boston, MA on February 29th from 9:00 am to 2:30 pm.

An unconference is basically a conference without predefined topics. The high level structure and theme is team excellence and quality culture, but actual topics are generated by the participants on the spot, and breakout groups are formed dynamically based on interest and relevance.

We have a stimulating day planned. We will be discussing team excellence and quality culture and contributing to development of a body of knowledge for the Team and Workplace Excellence Forum. The agenda is here.

The Unconference is free to members of the ASQ. For non-ASQ members there is a charge of $15.00 per person for lunch.

Please RSVP by February 23rd, so we can reserve a seat for you. We are looking forward to seeing you there. If there is anything you will need or have any questions, please don’t hesitate to let me know. The RSVP is here.

The my.ASQ.org event page is here: https://my.asq.org/communities/events/item/170/60/1568

VUCA – Accented Just Right It is a Profanity

Talk about strategy, risk management, or change; it is inevitable that the acronym VUCA — short for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity — will come up. VUCA is a catchall for “Hey, it’s crazy out there!” And like many catch-all’s it is misleading, VUCA conflates four distinct types of challenges that demand four distinct types of responses. VUCA can quickly become a crutch, a way to throw off the hard work of strategy and planning—after all, you can’t prepare for a VUCA world, right?

The mistake folks often make here is treating these four traits as a single idea, which leads to poorer decision making.

VUCA really isn’t a tool. It’s a checklist of four things that hopefully your system is paying attention to. All four represent distinct elements that make our environment and organization harder to grasp and control. 

ASQ BOSCON

The Boston Section of the ASQ is hosting the 39th annual BOSCON March 30-31, 2020 at the Airport Hilton hotel & conference center here in Boston.

ASQ BOSCON is proably the biggest and best run regional quality conference. I’ve been going for years and I highly recommend it to everyone.

The BOSCON 2020 theme is Performance Excellence—Your Competitive Edge. “To succeed in today’s digital economy, Quality must lead the way. Quality principles and practices are essential, but practitioners must innovate, learn and lead in how they are adapted to the digital age.”

The Team and Workplace Excellence Forum is proud to be a silver level sponsor. We firmly believe in quality’s role to build a culture of excellence, and that the challenges of the digital age are exciting ones to overcome.

A strongly recommended conference and I hope folks will be able to attend. Registration information can be found here.

There are also some good classes for certification preparation being offered after the conference for the Supplier Quality, Biomedical Auditor and Reliability Engineer certifications.

Perform an Audit of your own Expertise

One of the dangers in any organization is that the hard-won know-how of our experts remains locked in their brains and is not shared. To beat this tendency, knowledge management should be a continuous activity in any quality system. So why not start by documenting your own knowledge as an expert?

SubjectAnswer these QuestionsThings to clarify
Foundational KnowledgeWhat reference materials do you use?

How do you track technical trends?		Should a knowledge recipient own any of these reference materials? What are the best websites? Are there particular journals that you fi nd useful? What about associations?
Technical/ScientificWhat kinds of problems do people come to you to solve?  

What are the biggest risks in the project, process, or system you manage?		Can you describe a problem brought to you recently? What technical mistakes is a novice likely to make in that project or process?
Professional NetworkWhom do you ask about technology trends and innovation?

Whom do you contact for information about government regulations?		What is this go-to person’s complete contact information? What medium does he or she prefer (email versus telephone)? What is his or her background? How do you know this person?
OrganizationalWho are the major stakeholders in the project, process, or system you manage?

What are the biggest mistakes newcomers make in trying to get projects going here?		What are the positions of the major stakeholders? Where are there competing priorities? Can you give me an example of a newcomer mistake and suggest how to avoid such mistakes?
InterpersonalRegarding team leadership, what criteria do you use to select team members?

How do you ensure the team is connected to the overall business strategy?

On a general level, how do you motivate people who report to you?		Why do you use these particular criteria? Have you ever chosen unwisely? What communication strategies are most effective? Can you give an example of what has really helped?

Once you’ve documented this knowledge, identify who else needs to know it, and then ensure the knowledge is transferred.