Social Media - Cloud Tools - blessing or curse for the Quality Field - Quality in Unusual Places

Quality Management needs and Social Media Tools in the Cloud often seem totally unconnected. So is finding a long term quality tool in the social media cloudy universe probably asking too much or not ? I chose this as my theme when ASQ's Paul Borawski asked the ASQ Influential Bloggers to explore finding Quality Tools in Unusual Places as their theme for March 2013.

Both Quality and Social Media share a focus on improvement and innovation. However Quality Management requires procedures with documents and records to be kept for extended periods - whereas the Social Media in the Cloud paradigm is more rooted in ephemera and the ever ephemeral - also seemingly all too trivial to some.

Nearly 5 years ago, as the Global Financial Crisis exploded onto the world stage, I found my Quality Manager role totally shaken up. For the previous two years it had mainly required a "steady hand on the tiller". But as my company wanted to expand its export efforts it faced an ever increasing number of non-tariff barriers aka Technical Barriers to Trade aka TBT's. As Quality Manager I was tasked with working through the maze and getting the certifications in place.

The amount of information I had to sift through to understand the global trade and standards system of each country or region that I was dealing with seemed insurmountable - as various countries fled increasingly into the use of the TBT's to protect their domestic economy. The US Trade Representative's report of 2010 showed how the number of TBT's experienced exponential growth. So a lot of work for me, but when you consider each boatload of steel sent to Europe was worth 15 million Euro's - it became quite compelling to get on top of those evergrowing mountains of information.

Coincidentally in late 2008 I had attended a National Knowledge Management Conference in Canberra Australia where newly emerging social media tools were being enthusiastically shared. Initially hesitant, but by March 2009 I had decided to dive in head first into the social media tools pool to help deal with the TBT information overload :

• storing & sharing favourite websites aka bookmarks - (thenYahoo's) Delicious
• scanning for information - Twitter & Hootsuite microblogging tools plus Google Alerts, groups in LinkedIn and powerpoints in Slideshare
• blogs - although back then the number of Quality related blogs was still quite low - initially I used Google's Blogger but then moved over to Posterous which was a little friendlier to use
• RSS feeds & RSS reader - when great sources of information were located I could feed them into Google Reader where I could read them in one place without doing Google searches or going to individual websites - a great time saver - and the articles could be tagged eg Quality, Records, Audits, TBT's etc. And it was all searchable and shareable. Over the following years I evolved to become one of Google Reader's Power Users.
• and I managed to get them inter-connected and talking to each other - my own beautiful little Quality ecosytem.
• I then shared the information in a Company Sharepoint site via a wiki - a great tool for on-boarding a new team member. And to also minimise a whole lot of people going off and doing the same Google searches over and over again. My new team member soaked up the knowledge and information on that wiki like a sponge.

Togther these tools all made up my electronic Quality Personal Knowledge Management System Toolkit.

My company achieved certifications for several Asian countries and for the European CE Mark Construction Products Directive & Regulation. Using the Social Media tools helped save my sanity back then. And over the following couple of years, more folks in the Quality space began using these tools too, as well as ASQ, ISO, SAI Global etc - so it was all a great resource as my Quality Manager role expanded.

Then a few ripples and ructions.

I was headed to an ISO TC 176 SC2 Working Group meeting in Sydney Australia looking at the future of ISO 9001, when I heard that Yahoo decided to drop Delicious in December 2010. I had so many Quality related websites favourited in Delicious so I was definitely shaken by the news. A few days later I moved to Diigo along with quite a few others. Delicious was subsequently reincarnated - so I decided to use both - a sort of back up plan if either should fall over again.

Twitter bought Posterous Blogging and there were whispers that the end might then be nigh for Posterous - although this was denied - so I started moving copies of my blog articles over to Blogger as a backup just in case. I also began using Wordpress in late 2012 when I set up the social media tools for a local resident community group, but I hesitated to copy all of my own Posterous articles to the Wordpress Blog site - wouldn't copies of the same article in three places have been overkill ?

And then in February 2013, on the day I was heading out to South America for 6 weeks vacation, Posterous's demise was announced by Twitter's CEO - with no access available from May 2013. I was relieved that I would have time on my return to make sure all my article posts had gone to Blogger. And I began to re-think posting them all into Wordpress after all.

Finally in mid March 2013 when I was still vacationing in South America, Google announced it was retiring aka axing Google Reader as part of its "spring clean" - now that had me worried. So much of my Quality related information was in there. Previously I had put aside niggling thoughts of what to do if this ever happened.

By the time I was back home in Australia, possible solutions were emerging - 500,000 people had moved to Feedly - which looked prettier, but didn't have all the functionality of Google Reader although it is promised. Will it make the July 1 2013 deadline ? Who knows ? However it seemed the best of what was on offer.

Two other big guns, Digg and Wordpress have promised to develop solutions - and there is an alphabet soup of other products out there - but many were anchored in Google Reader so how they will go once it is axed - then again, who knows ?

Google advised of a tool to download your stored data from Google Reader, cutely entitled "Takeout" - unfortunately for some of the power users like me, we had to wait for even more tinkering to get our information downloaded.

Various folks began to remonstrate - can you trust Google - can you really trust social media tools in the cloud? Is it wise to develop such a reliance on them ? (Harold Jarche and John T Spencer). Others were like ... just get over it and move on - Beth Kanter - with references to Spencer Churchill's 1988 "Who moved my Cheese?"

Indeed the pace of change in this field of Social Media Tools in the Cloud is so great - such a very short half life. But for some of us, we need a much longer information half life - eg for Quality certification requirements or operation of physical infrastructure like power stations, highways and dams etc. Finally, I read, a couple of days ago, that some folks were beginning to recognize these differing half life paradigms.

I liked the comments on educationalist John T Spencer's blog post  on Google Reader's demise. He ended up agreeing it's worth using these tools - but make sure you have educated the students to understand change - and be sure you have a back up plan in case the plug gets pulled on the tool.

I would still advocate the use of these tools for the finding and sharing of supporting information in the Quality Management field - and definitely agree you need a back up plan to ensure continuity of this information. But for that key information, documents and records needed for Quality Certification, I would contend that they be kept in a place where you control their destiny - and not the boards of companies like Google, Yahoo and Twitter.

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70-20-10 Learning - an Aussie ASQ Global Influential Voice for Quality Shares on Making a Difference

Lifelong Learning & 70:20:10 rule of learning = Informal on the Job:Coaching:Formal Classroom Llessons  ? Making a Difference Globally ?

I am a great fan of Harold Jarche & John Tropea with their strong focus on informal learning including the 70-20-10 rule of learning. Likewise I am a strong proponent of Quality in our daily lives, and so was intrigued by ASQ's head Paul Borawski's recent post "Quality Tools and Education : Making a Difference on a Global Scale."

Of course, learning & knowledge management are key components of continual improvement in Resource Management in Quality - as reflected in even the previous edition of ISO 9004. In our world Education is not just what you do at school, college or university - we have to keep re-learning in such a rapidly changing world. And we need confidence in the quality of the resources we use, as we continually learn & re-learn.

Nearly 10 years ago I encountered the Learning Cities & Communities movement - centred around Lifelong Learning - a key to resilience of communities in change and adversity. The initiative was largely appropriated by the Community College movement aka Adult Education Associations in Australia. Yet I always believed that it couldn't be monopolised by this sector alone - not everyone is in a position to attend formal face to face classroom lessons.

In Sydney, Australia we had an insightful article by Louise Williams in this weekend's edition of our local Sydney Morning Herald "The Slow Collapse of the Ivory Tower". Ms Williams wrote of how learning is changing from face to face classrooms in an internet world and how this threatens the traditional university or college monopoly on higher learning. She also spoke of how increasing numbers of students are not attending lectures, choosing to source their required information in alternative ways. Curious as I had observed lecturers at my local uni lamenting the same when I attended a prize giving event last November.

And yet it's not new - when I served for 12 years on the Governing Council of the University of Wollongong (located south of Sydney), I found that UOW was already moving into on-line blended E-learning years ago. However there are advantages of face to face learning - the serendipity & synergy of bouncing ideas off each other.

Likewise there are emerging challenges to the traditional "peer reviewed paper" in an academic journal on which academics' ranking is based - enabling them to compete for research funding & attract students. I recall attending a conference across the other side of Australia about 5 years ago, where attendees were denied timely access to copies of the conference papers because the organisers wanted to publish them to increase the rankings of academics who had presented at the conference. It was "all driven by the rankings cycle" as I subsequently found out - and I finally received the conference papers 9 months after the conference! The freshness and impact of the presenters' work in my mind was lost - I'd wanted to share new insights with my professional colleagues - but all I had were my scribbled handwritten notes.

No wonder that with this time delay paradigm, the proliferation and the increasing cost of academic journals, that the peer reviewed paper model is now being seriously challenged by the immediacy of online collaboration. And yet we need to ensure that there is confidence in the quality of online E-learning & web posts. It is also important that "Digital Native" students can discriminate between accurate & erroneous information in a web based & increasingly social media dominated world.

Not to mention the tipping point as we see the rapidly disappearing print book market and the exploding E-book market - with its flow-on impact on Public & Academic Librarians. Librarians are recognising that they must participate in the debate around these changes rather than take the high moral ground and shun it. At a Library Conference in Brisbane Australia last year, one presenter spoke of the advantages of E-Readers for students in the Pacific Islands where high humidity can destroy the traditional printed book based library collections.

Unfortunately some Baby Boomer Managers are still dismissive of Web 2.0 and Social Media tools in Technology & Quality worlds. Yet ISO, the OECD & WTO, for instance, have embraced social media approaches (eg Youtube, Facebook & Twitter)  in trying to reach a wider global audience. Admittedly, it can seem haphazard sometimes especially with social media tools like Paper.li Dailies (eg mine-KerrieAnne paper.li).

However as a Baby Boomer techo manager, I've had to reinvent myself several times over the last 5 years - 1st as a Quality Manager and then during the GFC with a zero training budget, to become an International Trade backroom boffin -  specialising in how standards & conformity apply in Technical (Non Tariff) Barriers to Trade (TBT's). I've used tools like Sharepoint's Wiki to capture my evolving WTO TBT knowledge, sharing it both locally and globally across my organization - to avoid re-inventing the wheel.

So it is great to see how organizations like ASQ are embracing online E-learning & social media tools to address the 70:20:10 approaches to learning. ASQ is bringing a quality approach to these new technologies - setting a standard on how they can be applied for younger and older "students" alike - regardless of whether they are formally enrolled in courses or learning informally. As an Australian based member of ASQ, and one of its International Global Influential Voices for Quality, I am sharing & learning from my fellow Global Influential Voices - a fantastic initiative.

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 (Please note I do receive a variety of quality resources as an honorarium in exchange for my commitment to the ASQ Global Influential Voices for Quality program. However the thoughts & opinions that I express here in my blog are my own!).

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ASQ Global Influential Quality Voice from Down Under on Social Responsibility - Safe Foods - Quality Back to Basics - inspired by Paul Borawski

In Down Under Australia, January is usually the post New Year summer holiday season - beaches, long lazy lunches - but this year it's been one of crisis as we find so much of our country under water with the latest La Nina event - perhaps one of the worst in years. Great to see so many now volunteering in the clean-ups as the floods & cyclones (aka Hurricanes) continue. I have been fortunate that my family, friends & our properties have escaped. So I'm a little behind in my ASQ Global Influential Voices blogging (please note I do receive a variety of quality resources as an honorarium in exchange for my commitment. However the thoughts & opinions that I express here in my blog are my own!).

We have this amazing ASQ CEO Paul Borawski who's blogged on CSR - Corporate Social Responsibility, Quality Goals for 2011 and Food Safety. So inspiring to see our leader "being a leader". Especially when I read my daily RSS feeds of ASQ News. At times it's been horrifying to read some of the updates - food safety issues on so many different continents, electronic voting machine fraud. Although I am Engineering/Knowledge Quality Manager, my first job was as a junior casual at a Tourism food outlet, where I learnt about food quality & safety
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And I am really enjoying reading the thoughts of my fellow ASQ Global Influential Voices for Quality as they blog on key quality related topics - eg from the USA, South America & India. Without this ASQ program I might never have encountered all of these fantastic people's ideas ! See my Blogroll (Left Frame) to read their latest thoughts !

As for my goals, some I've made a good start on already ...

• Back to the basics re-focus on quality - yesterday I pulled together a quick Powerpoint for my Team on what ISO 9001 says about expectations on Product Conformity (quite a lot  actually !) I was inspired by Dr Nigel Croft, Chair of ISO TC 176 SC2, at the Sydney meeting in December 2010 - clearly it's not meant to be about "concrete life jackets & concrete lifeboats" but consistently conforming with customers' product conformity requirements
• Maintaining & gaining new national & international certifications (ISO 9001, CE Mark, ISO 17025, Singapore BC 1, Malaysia SIRIM, Indonesia SNI & new Australian ATIC) to enable my company to win new markets - means using new technologies like social media to stay on top of what's happening eg the EU's upcoming Construction Products Regulation due to replace the Directive with associated CE Marking requirements
• Exploring the different "Managements" in a Quality Paradigm - Knowledge, Risk, Records - and sharing these via Sharepoint wiki pages so the knowledge is not just locked up in my brain and my PKM - Personal Knowledge Management system (across Googlereader RSS, ASQ, UK CQI, Elsmar Cove, Quality Magazine, ISO, Hootsuite, Twitter, Diigo, Blogs, C-Drive & Servers, LinkedIn, Hard Copies, Sharepoint, Documentum)
• eg facilitate cross fertilizing between our Knowledge Management Service Librarians & our Quality Management Systems Auditors on Records Management
• Working with our Learning & Development & Product Stewardship teams on issues of common concern, like reinvigorating our Knowledge Management program, on Corporate Social Responsibility ISO 26000 issues & capturing it in Sharepoint wiki pages
• And, post the "worst of the last 2 years of the Global Financial Crisis" to set up Quality Development & Awareness programs, to create Lessons Learned from the experiences of BP and Toyota, as it would be so easy to succumb if we don't take a strong stand on quality and ethics
• Migrate our site' main controlled document system from an Intranet to a Sharepoint portal connected with anEMC Documentum CMS
• Upgrade our org's Atlassian Confluence - our critical IP system
• Foster use of Web 2.0 tools by my colleagues to achieve cost effective DIY ways of staying current in our professional discipline areas
• Reincarnate our organization's Quality Global Community of Practice
• Help my external network members to understand the records management compliance requirements in a rapidly changing world of social media, mobile web & Cloud computing technologies. Fortunately my significant other is a governance manager in ICT Project Management so we do lots of cross-fertilization !
• Participate in ISO TC 176 SC 2 WG23 as a corresponding member under Tania Marcos and in Australia's ISO TC 176 SC2 mirror committee, QR-008 under Darryl Yanniuck - also its sister committee on Auditing QR-006
• To learn from my fellow Standards Australia committee members, Kevin Foley & Alex Ezrakovich
• Help to capture the amazing knowledge of one of Australia's governance icons, a silver citizen & Web 2.0 Apprentice, Stan Ambrose, in writing a technical note on the performance of steels, in pressure equipment under emergencies like serious fires / explosions - so much great knowledge - too valuable to lose !
• To reflect on the various ideas & concepts I'm encountering, rather than just filing - my new A Maven's Magnets weekly blog
• And to support my Ms 16 year old Teenager as she enters her last year of High School & seeks to gain entry to an Australian University

so much to do ... it's going to be a great ride !

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Postscripts from my Google Reader RSS & Twitter feeds :

“The happy people are those who are producing something; the bored people are those who are consuming much and producing nothing.”

William Ralph Inge (1860 – 1954)

English author, Anglican priest, Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, and Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral

"Open your arms to change, but do not let go of your values"~ Dalai Lama

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Speaking up for Baldrige from a DownUnder Aussie ASQ Global Influential Voice for Quality

Baldridge funding to be axed ? What ? Why should someone from DownUnder Australia even care ?

It seemed only hours after the latest award winners were announced, that the Baldridge itself was under threat. Today in Sydney Australia at ISO TC 176 SC2, I shared with Lorrie Hunt & Denise Robitaille how important my ASQ membership has been for me. Likewise for me the Baldridge has been an inspiration, like the Olympics of Quality.

To be honest I found Denis Arter’s views very provocative but definitely worth a read : sort of like ... that winners of awards like Baldridge are too often what we in Australia call “oncers”. They put in a big effort to get the award, only to slowly undergo “quality fade”. But my thoughts were more in tune with Paul Borawski’s and I too am part of the ASQ Influential Voices program. (Note - While I receive a variety of quality resources as honorarium from ASQ in exchange for my commitment, the thoughts and opinions expressed on my blog are my own.)

I have been associated with three organizations who won the Australian Quality Awards, before the awards disappeared. After a while, they were eventually replaced by the Business Excellence Awards run by SAI Global.
1.0 My employer, a manufacturing organization, won the award 20 years ago, after initiating a TQC program. We’ve maintained our ISO 9001 certification since 1991. There’s a photograph of the trophy on the shelf in my office. I often glance at it and ponder on the cultural transformation involved in winning the award. Which was the greater achievement I wondered ? That award ? Or the organizational transformation ? And quite simply put : if the organization hadn’t maintained its certification, it would lose huge market share – many customers simply demand at least ISO 9001.
Now in our organization’s quality management team, we use Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 IT tools to stay current with emerging trends in quality and certifications. That includes ISO & ASQ’s RSS feeds& Twitter streams, Sharepoint wiki’s etc. I shared some of these experiences at a Knowledge Management conference, ACTKM10 in Canberra Australia last October. Back In the office, we’ve had robust debates on future directions to keep improving. We cannot afford to stand still – currently we’re looking to a maturity matrix tool as part of our internal quality audit program.
2.0 The Library Manager of the University where I served on the governing Council was totally committed to the quality paradigm. The Library won the Australian Quality Award and later the University Administration department was certified to ISO 9001. No doubt exposure to the Library’s National Quality Award raised the quality paradigm within the university campus.
3.0 Sadly the third organization, a local City Council did not maintain the commitment – it had been regarded as a leader in the field in Australia not only in winning the Australian Quality Award but in other innovative operational ways as well. As an elected Local Government Councillor I was very proud that the City won the Australian Quality Award. Unfortunately the quality vision was lost with the departure of the Lord Mayor to State Government. So winning the award ended up being only a project – it needs to be a process without a sunset.
No, we shouldn’t immediately dismiss the value of quality awards like Baldridge, nor tag all award winners as “oncers”. We have awards in so many fields of endeavour such as sport –so why not quality? Over the last year or so we’ve seen the effect of large organizations dropping the quality ball. Unimaginable human consequences and more, rippling through economies and the environment. We need organizations to aspire to quality performance and recognition helps. We need Quality role models to be the “light on the hill” for others.
Of course awards such as Baldridge may need to evolve, just as we found with the Australian Quality Awards becoming the Business Excellence Awards.
Over the last week I have been very privileged to work with experts from the international quality family. They have travelled from across the globe to Sydney Australia to participate in ISO TC 176 SC2’s activities. We’ve been led by Nigel Croft, assisted by Charles Corrie & Jose Dominguez in imagining possibilities for a future ISO 9001. My team from India, Indonesia, Colombia, UK, Denmark, USA, South Africa, UK & Australia, has been led by a Spaniard. It has been inspiring to meet people like Lorrie Hunt & Denise Robitaille, women of quality who had until now been names on articles in quality magazines to me. Our times see ethics and corporate social responsibility (ISO 26000) emerging, not to mention exploding social media/mobile web IT in quality. So lots of ideas considered this week - some may actually turn into reality and others may not. But it is important to reflect & consider if there is to be innovation.
So let’s not let Baldridge go – maybe change - but not extinction !

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Global Influential Voices - Conversations on Overcoming Crises - Big Yellow Taxis and Can ASQ Beat the Race to the Bottom

I've been updating my Facebook page - moving it beyond just family and school friends as colleagues wanted to friend me. So I've created some lists including an engineering / quality management list - which includes Quality bodies such as ISO & ASQ. I've been following both of them on Twitter but wasn't so sure about Facebook - but more professional bodies seem to be moving beyond their webpages into LinkedIn and then over to Facebook, Twitter, RSS & YouTube. Time had come to make some lists.

I'm in manufacturing and I've been a member of online digital global communities for about 15 years now in Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 worlds. And I continue to be delighted at the generosity of my buddies across the world. I've learned so much from them and been happy to share in return across my professional and community involvements.

My professional world stretches from product quality control to ISO 9001 Quality Management to Records Management to Knowledge Management to Forensic Engineering to Safety Management. I've really needed to learn from others in a more informal way, especially in the Global Financial Crisis era which trashed our formal training budgets.

So my membership of ASQ, an organization of quality professionals, has been an absolute life saver with its amazing breadth of online resources available to members globally. Recently I gave a presentation at a Knowledge Management conference in Canberra Australia on how social media tools have helped me to efficiently monitor emerging trends in quality management & technical barriers to trade. I need this in order to be on top of international trade trends in order to help my company gain & maintain access to international markets, via achieving 3rd Party certifications such as the EU's CE Mark.

As an Australian member of ASQ I was recently honored to be invited to participate in the ASQ Global Influential Voices program - (see our Moderator Paul's first blog). So I am delighted to be able to give back to those in ASQ Communities who have helped so many of us in the recent difficult years. And I find it incredible that I can be reading what quality guru's like Denis Arter are saying in almost real time. He's no longer just a book on my Quality Management bookshelf - but a real authentic person.

I'm also a member of several Standards Australia committees on Quality Management and also on Pressure Equipment, which is more at the coal face of quality. Get Pressure Equipment wrong and the outcomes can be serious even fatal.

What does that mean in reality ? Well I am a passionate traveller and over the last 5 years the overlapping spectra of quality/records/knowledge management has become very real to me as I travelled around the world ...

Think of the efforts to refurbish the Parthenon in Athens without original construction plans and working drawings ...

or the knowledge loss with the destruction of the library of Alexandria - not much remains as you can see from my pic below ...

I've been amazed to read of the incredible global collaboration led by New Zealand born / Australian RMIT Professor Mark Burry, that has finally seen the completion of Gaudi's La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona using collaborative & imaging technologies unimagined at the time of Gaudi's death, or even when I visited there in the early 1980's :

And with so much knowledge loss around the design & construction of our global cultural heritage, I was amazed to discover in Basilica San Marco, Venice, that the original designers & builders had kept a record which has assisted in its refurbishment over the years. What foresight !

People often seem too complacent about Quality till they discover problems and all too often too late: like that Joni Mitchell song Big Yellow Taxi - "you don't know what you've got till it's gone".

We do live in an increasingly globalized world and in the late 1990's there were fears about the newly emerging World Trade Organization (WTO) and globalization. Back then there was the Battle for Seattle - with a fear of crisis and a "Race to the Bottom" on many fronts : environment, quality, safety, living standards etc.

However an economist friend commented to me : There is nothing wrong with globalization if it is done right, with the right rules & controls.

Globalization need not be a crisis and indeed it is interesting to consider that the Asian script for Crisis represents both danger & opportunity :

Just like the global collaboration that has seen Barcelona's La Sagrada Familia finally completed & consecrated, I see the ASQ Global Voices of Quality initiative is opportunity to have global conversations, especially for those of us lone voices scattered across the globe, to promote the quality paradigm : sharing experiences & learnings - focusing on the Opportunities - done right it can counter the many Dangers facing our world & the fears of the Race to the Bottom.

Yes : I’m part of the ASQ Influential Voices program. While I receive a variety of quality resources as honorarium from ASQ in exchange for my commitment, the thoughts and opinions expressed on my blog are my own. I'm looking forward to learning, sharing and developing a community with my fellow participants, including Paul, our program leader.

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