Let me take you back to 2008 and the big financial bang. During a briefing by academics at the London School of Economics on the turmoil in the international markets the Queen asked: 'Why did nobody notice it?'
Of course many people saw it coming and have continued to see other failures coming since: VW using cheat devices, serious problems at FIFA, the dangerously poor care provided at Stafford hospital… I’ll leave you to complete the post-2008 list.
Quality failure – why does it happen?
The Institute of Directors (IOD) 2015 conference asked the same question in one of its panel sessions without coming to any real conclusions, on why executive and non-executive teams appear to be caught unawares by quality failure.
How can we improve quality?
This is an interesting and good question for senior management teams, regulators and insurance firms to be asking. It is their responsibility to firstly ensure that a business assurance framework is in place and that the scope is broad enough to embrace all stakeholder requirements – and is not just focused on finance.
Secondly, and crucially, the framework must align with the organisation’s risks. All senior leaders should be asking, 'does our risk register capture the risks identified through the business assurance process?'
And the third question all senior leaders should be asking is, 'does our change program reflect the risks identified in the business assurance process?' One of the fundamental reasons for having an assurance framework in place is the ability to deliver effective change.
© Chartered Quality Institute
The CQI and the quality professional
The CQI works with a number of organisations and I am always impressed to learn about quality professionals who have influenced their senior teams, and moved the quality or business assurance report from being a tactical document, to one that forms a part of every executive and risk committee meeting. We need to see these success stories multiply, so that all organisations understand that a closed loop management system provides a glimpse of the potential future, which can be used to identify and mitigate threats and opportunities.
The CQI conference on Wednesday 13th April and our 2016 Masterclass series will address these topics. But perhaps what we should really be aiming for is a joint conference between the IOD and the CQI to bring the governance and assurance worlds firmly together.
Re-Positioning the Quality Profession
Estelle Clark, Head of Profession, the Chartered Quality Institute (CQI) will be leading a keynote session at Triaster’s Achieving Better Processes and Systemic Improvement Workshop, being held on 21st April in London.
Estelle’s session, ‘Re-Positioning the Quality Profession’ will focus on how quality management contributes to business and the CQI's vision for the future of the profession.
The Achieving Better Processes and Systemic Improvement workshop is specifically for anyone looking for a hands-on way to learn about implementing process improvement in their organisation.
In addition to learning about how to most easily capture what your organisation does currently, (including identifying risk) and how to implement a framework for continual improvement, you will have an opportunity to brainstorm and network with like-minded quality professionals, faced with the same challenges as you.
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