An International Quality Framework – The CQI

The world is becoming smaller and smaller every day. Organisations are growing, new industries are emerging and some are disappearing. With that, new professions are becoming more sought than others. We have moved away from the days (well almost moved away) where a professional has to be a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer. But looking back at those days, I think one factor played an important role in how these professions were perceived, and that is an accrediting body.

Not all professions are monitored or governed by a professional body accredited international. But when other industries look at the success of those 3 career paths, they certainly learn something.

In my previous jobs, we always implemented what we thought was a great improvement to the service. We came with a skill set of analysis and making decisions to improve products and services. But we always felt a minority. We always felt that everyone had a different perception – a roll your eyes, here they come kind of of perception. With accessibility to social media, to blogs, to virtual conferences, it became apparent, that we are not the only ones on the planet. That there are other people that speak our language and understand our thought process. And that has empowered us even more.

Today, the profession has progressed even further. The Chartered Quality Institute has defined an international framework and core competencies that Quality Professionals must acquire to be fit to practice in the industry.

Those core competencies are:

Assurance, Improvement, Governance, Leadership, and Context.

Context envelops all of those competencies and Leadership sits at the heart of them. We are moving away from Quality professionals being people who have good organisational skills and can follow a check list. Or people who have eye for detail. This is no longer sufficient. Now if you are a quality professional who is good with auditing but has no understanding of the context of a product or service within the organisation, then your audit has no added value.

If you perform an audit and you are unable to analyse the findings and make recommendations for improvement that are suitable for that particular organisation, then you have dramatically limited the impact and the power of your work. That is why applying a framework to different contexts is what differentiate professionals.

To know that there is an institute that is now working internationally to streamline and drive forward the profession of Quality is very refreshing. The CQI did not stop there, they even took it a step further and decided it is about time to recognise professionals for their contribution. And with that said, it is with pride I share that I am a finalist in the one of the categories “Quality Professional in a New Project”. A great achievement that is very humbling and rewarding. The CQI has published the list of finalists for 2017. The award ceremony will be held on the 22nd of November in London, UK. You can find out more about the finalists on the CQI website here. (scroll down to category 5)!

Follow my blog as I will write more about each of the competencies in future posts.