My Experience with ASQ this week (May 2005)

[Steve Prevette]

I would like to tell the following tale. I will not name names involved, and I will try to tell it as rationally as possible.

Last week, a national board member decided it would be a good idea if during the Board meeting next week, a panel could be made up of interested ASQ volunteers to discuss with the board their perceptions of the boards' communications. The Regional Directors and Division Directors were asked to come up with likely members who could adjust their schedule to attend next Thursday May 12 to such a session.

On Tuesday, May 3, I was contacted by email by the Region 12 Director (not my region) and suggested that I should try to attend. They said I should contact my Regional Director, and the email listed the Section Affairs Council chair, and an ASQ staffer as points of contact. On Wednesday and Thursday I held lengthy phone and email discussions with all 3 parties, and was assured that this was a bona-fide offer and encouraged me to attend. I did try to call the national board member, but kept getting voice mail, but a generic message of not being at the phone. On Thursday, I made considerable arrangements at work to take two extra days off next week (this included working today, Friday, which was normally a day off as we work 9 hour days and every other Friday is off), and set up kennel reservations for the dogs and I got my wife primed for what we could fit in.

This morning, I was informed the session was canceled. After many (heated, at least by me I admit) phone calls it turns out that on late Monday early Tuesday the national board member involved and another ASQ staffer decided to cancel the session. No one had been able to change their plans that they knew of (and how they thought any would be able to on such short notice I don't know). However, no one was notified, certainly not my RD, the SAC chair, nor the ASQ staffer on the original notice. "Technical Difficulties" kept an all-call email from being sent until late today.

Of course, I am being a bit villified for being less than a happy camper about this.

The senior staff person at ASQ did let me know that ASQ Board meetings are open for ANY member to attend. Currently, I have made the request that I be allowed 10 minutes on the Board agenda during the Communications exercise on Thursday to present the original problem list, plus this latest example of very poor planning. But in order to do so, the President of ASQ (Danny Duhan) must approve.

I think there is a chance we could force this to happen, but I could use the support of the ASQ members here to help push this request through.

[Jennifer Kirley]

I would be foaming. And I would be less than kind while asking people why they did not contact me within one day of cancelling a session that I made great efforts to attend. It's so dissapointing, Steve, but on the other hand why am I not surprised?

Given my last plaintive message to the Living Strategy discussion thread was not responded to (for whatever reason--it appeared faster than usual; is Paul not around these days?) since April 19, you absolutely have my support. My membership doesn't expire until June 30th, I believe it is, so I'm still able to prod and poke as appropriate until that day.

What can I do to help?

[Steve Prevette]

Originally Posted by Jennifer Kirley

What can I do to help?

1. Contact your Section Chair to see if they are responding to the latest version of this effort. The text of the message sent out Friday by ASQ HQ is:

This message is sent on behalf of Connie Faylor, ASQ Board of Directors:

Dear Division and Section Chairs, Vice-Chairs and Chairs-elect:

The ASQ Board is using part of the meeting time for professional development. This year we are focusing on improved communications. To date, we have addressed communications within the board room and communications between ASQ staff and board members. This work is done to improve all that we do. In our May meeting, we will use the time to address communications from the board to our member leaders and our membership. It would be EXTREMELY valuable if you would take a few minutes to send me your thoughts about how well we are doing. We are looking for both positive and negative examples of our communication. We are looking for information that will help us to improve. It will be helpful if you can provide some specific examples of what is working well as well as identify needs and specific areas for improvement. The intent is to help us as a board, as a collective group, to improve how we share information, communicate changes, respond to the field and help our customer base. We want the feedback to provide the real and perceived roles of the board from the sections, divisions and individual members.

You can send your comments directly to me at cfaylor@nep.benfranklin.org

Thank you so very much with your help on this work. I apologize for the short notice. I welcome your comments through 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday, 11 May. I believe that this will be a nice learning opportunity for us so that we improve our communication and deployment through the society.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,
Connie
Connie Faylor
ASQ National Director
Regional Manager
Ben Franklin Technology Partners
(phone number removed)

2. Contact your Regional Director, who is a member of the Board and let them know your own concerns with ASQ and with this situation.

3. Contact Connie Faylor, at cfaylor@nep.benfranklin.org, per the message above.

Thanks,

[Randy]

Just builds on my reasoning to not renew my membership in it and other "Professional" organizations.

[Steve Prevette]

Attached is the file that I have sent in per the latest request from the ASQ board for communications. I hope to be allowed to present excerpts from it face to face with the ASQ board.

I welcome any comments or additions. Also, I encourage any interested member to send in this file, or their comments to ASQ.

[Wes Bucey]

Originally Posted by Steve Prevette

Attached is the file that I have sent in per the latest request from the ASQ board for communications. I hope to be allowed to present excerpts from it face to face with the ASQ board.

I welcome any comments or additions. Also, I encourage any interested member to send in this file, or their comments to ASQ.

I did notice one typo you might want to correct:
You wrote:
"A decision was made in late April to convene a panel of 6 members of ASQ to interface with the Board about communications. Apparently the decision to cancel the panel had been made late Monday/early Tuesday May 10. I was contacted by the Region 12 Region Director on Tuesday about the panel. I held lengthy discussions with the ASQ staff member identified as the ASQ point of contact by the Region 12 Region Director, the Region 6 Region Director, and the Section Affairs Council chair on Wednesday and Thursday. I went to considerable effort to free myself up to make it to the panel. It was not until Friday morning that I was notified that the panel was canceled, well after making considerable commitments, and working unpaid overtime for my job."

I believe you meant
"Apparently the decision to cancel the panel scheduled for Thursday May 12 had been made late Monday/early Tuesday May 2/3, but I was not notified until Friday morning, May 6."

In my opinion, this was a terrible breech of etiquette on the part of ASQ elected officials and the paid staffers who actually did the communicating on behalf of the elected officials.


As a Demingite myself, I am loathe to point a finger at an individual's lapse of performance, but I would certainly expect to see an apology and the results of the Corrective Action and Preventive Action Reviews to fix the current breech and ensure that similar lapses do not occur in the future. As a customer, I would expect my supplier to be proactive in the Corrective/Preventive Action rather than reactive to my complaint. The SYSTEM seems to have failed at every opportunity. The management response appears to be a shrug and "So what!"


I wish I could offer more than sympathy.

I can only imagine that by this time (late Saturday), you feel like you've been "et by a pack of coyotes and pooped over a cliff."

[Steve Prevette]

Thanks for the read, Wes, and the typo is corrected and a new version resent.

[Marc]

Any chance you will let us know what you plan to say (or, if afterwards, what you did say)? Just curious about the specifics you want to address.

In large part this is very disappointing because you are very involved with the ASQ. I could better understand it if they did this to someone who basically just pays their dues and doesn't actively participate (like me).