Tag: skills

Quality Control as a Top 10 Skill

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has developed a Global Skills Taxonomy that provides a framework for aligning around a universal language for skills. It synthesizes and builds on existing taxonomies by integrating definitions and categorizations of skills that are of growing relevance in a fast-changing labor market 1

According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2023, quality control is one of the top 10 core skills listed in the Global Skills Taxonomy. In the WEF taxonomy, Quality control refers to the process of verifying that a product or service meets specified standards or requirements. It appears to bundle both quality control and quality assurance into this definition.

Quality Control was not listed in the top 10 in the 2020 report. Throughout you find reference to a skill set called “Quality control and safety awareness”, so we can assume this is a refinement in the reporting. In any case, this is an interesting development that I wish the WEF’s material provided more detail on, especially as the 2021 Skills Taxonomy doesn’t include an entry for Quality Control.

You need to go to the Data Explorer for Quality Control to see valuable information. Including this nice chart on the 7 top countries emphasizing quality control.

What facinates me most here is how it is not developing countries, there are some economic power houses here.

The industry categories of importance are interesting. Some industries I consider strong on quality rank below the mean and ohers above the mean. Others, Information and technology services I am looking at you, rate well below the mean on importance and it explains a lot of what is wrong with the world.

It would be nice to see the taxonomic entry. I’m fascinated by this one on Problem-Solving, which contains the first 2 in the top 10.

Interesting read that creates a lot of questions for me. But France and Canada, feel free to hit me up since it seems you are skill building.

And to help the WEF out, here is a nice way to break down what Quality is all about.

Change Leader Competency

Luigi Sille on sharequality answered the June 2019 ASQ Roundtable Topic asks: “How can an individual become a successful Change Leader?” I’m a big fan of both blog carnivals and change management so here goes my answer, which is pretty similar to Luigi’s, and I would guess many other’s – just with my own spin.

A few things immediately come to mind.

Change management (and this is another great example of really meaning people change management) should be a competency on the ladder for any quality professional. It certainly needs to be a core area for anyone in a quality leadership position.

There are a lot of competency models out there for change management. Instead of pointing to just one, let’s try to find what they actually have in common. To do so it is important to set out the critical activities of change management:

  1. Define the change
  2. Ensure change delivers value
  3. Stakeholder strategy
  4. Communication and engagement
  5. Assess change impact
  6. Project management

In order to do these it is important to be able to provide education and learning support, facilitation, team effectiveness and understand how to sustain systems.

Change Management requires the seven skills we should all be developing: communication, content, context, emotional competence, teaching, connections, and an ethical compass

Change Management is part of the core for any quality leader, together with continuous improvement and knowledge management.