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2nd Gulf International
Quality Conference
Keynote Presentation

Tom Mosgaller
President, American Society for Quality
Manama, Bahrain
April 15, 2002

Thank you . . . I'm pleased to be here representing the American Society for Quality. The warm reception and hospitality I have received are most kind. I bring greetings from the 116,000 members of our society and best wishes for a successful conference.

Your theme of globalization for this, the 2nd Gulf International Quality Conference, is timely and appropriate, especially here in the Gulf region. Some people think the concept of globalization is a new one, originating in the late 20th century. I believe the seeds of globalization as we think of the concept today were sown years ago at the very dawn of modern civilization-with the rise of the first cities not far from here in the fertile valleys of Mesopotamia. And with the mixing of cultures as people spread out from these cities to mingle and trade with other parts of the known world.

Humankind has always been both inquisitive and acquisitive, propelled forward by the urge to explore and the urge to improve our lot. We have this great drive to seek beyond ourselves, to cross boundaries, to go anywhere in the world to discover what's on the other side of the mountain, and to borrow what we find and make it our own if it's useful to us.

In order for this mixing of cultures to take place, three things were required.

First, a motive. A driving force. This force was trade, the engine of globalization, which brought about the inevitable mingling of people and their cultures.

Second, there had to be some kind of common language. Linguists trace commonalties in spoken languages, showing the effects of this mingling of cultures. And the earliest known examples of writing-clay tablets found at the site of the ancient Mesopotamian city of Uruk-were simple lists of materials involved in trade.

The third requirement was the existence of major focal points between which trade occurred. Gathering places of sufficient population and concentration of wealth. Cultural and commercial centers that became the first true cities. Some 5000 years ago one of the world's great early cities, a place called Dilmun, was rising right here where we are today. Dilmun played a significant role in the history of the ancient world; sitting astride both the sea lanes and land routes, it formed a major link between early civilizations. It was regarded as a special, holy place-a paradise island where, ancient tablets tell us, the inhabitants were thought to be eternally young and suffered no illnesses, and where "the lion kills not" and "the wolf snatches not the lamb."

The earliest known document that mentions Dilmun, (c. 2520 b.c.). This inscription of Ur-Nanshe, king of Lagash, records that ships from Dilmun brought him wood from foreign lands.
Reproduced from Looking for Dilmun by Geoffrey Bibby

Dilmun controlled the copper trade and would have been at the crossroads of trade in other metals, pearls, lapis, timber, foodstuffs, and early manufactured goods such as textiles. Its citizens had contact with Uruk and the other cities of Mesopotamia, with the Indus Valley and points east, with Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. Contacts and interactions among these various cultures kept expanding over the years, west to Egypt, Crete and Greece and then later to Europe and the Americas, with each succeeding age making its mark and contributing its own unique influences to the growing, interwoven global tapestry of cultures.

Which brings us to today. What about us-quality professionals working at the start of the 21st century. What will be our mark? Our contribution?

To answer this question, I personally like to take some cues from the people of the ancient city of Athens. For many years I have kept on my office wall a plaque containing an excerpt from the Athenian oath. This is the oath that was pledged by respected citizens as they were chosen by their peers for roles of leadership in their city. It reads, "Thus in all ways we will transmit the city greater and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us."

This powerfully moving thought guided me in my career, working as an organizational development director for the government in the city of Madison. It served as my own personal quality mission.

While I was working for the city I began to interact with a culture new to me-the culture of quality improvement. Through interaction with this culture, and with education from some wise mentors, I became acquainted with the concepts of quality management. I came to view myself as a quality professional.

And so this Athenian oath became for me not just a statement of what I wanted to accomplish as a public servant, but something much more. It became a vision for what the quality profession as a whole could become and ought to become. We as quality professionals need to think beyond building quality into products and services. We must consider the implications of what we are doing-not just making the world a better market for products and serving consumers more efficiently, but also reinforcing the importance of our work and its contribution to making the world a better place for those who come after us.

Making the world a better place for those who come after us. That's a big assignment, but you and I have some unique talents and perspectives that equip us well for the task.

We are quality professionals, engineers, statisticians. We understand what Deming meant by "profound knowledge." Like the explorers and traders of old, we, too, are driven. Our motive is to make things better. I'd like to think that our spirit of discovery is just as strong as that which sent the traders out on their voyages thousands of years ago. We have our own universal language of commerce-the language of quality and the semantics of standardization-just as the ancient traders had theirs. We, however, trade in knowledge and ideas-the mainstays of the information age. We have places where we gather to trade in these ideas-places such as this Gulf International Quality Conference. Quality forums and networks. Yes, we really do have a global community of quality that is linked across geographical boundaries and cultures. Our exploits are marked by collaboration rather than conquest, by the urge to share rather than the urge to acquire.

We also know that the quality profession has evolved greatly in its short life span-from reliance on inspection to assurance, to prevention, to building quality in by design. From a primary focus on the "hard" side of quality-the statistics and sampling inspection methodologies-to the "soft" side emphasis on things like organizational dynamics and teamwork. We have been influenced by the worlds of management science and social science. Throughout our evolution we have come to realize more forcefully than ever that we are part of a larger community. We have come to understand that what we do and the unique knowledge we possess have the potential to influence our communities and our world for the better in so many ways.

Cooperation and collaboration have become a way of life for us. There are many fine examples of collaboration around quality-based principles. Within the global telecommunications industry, for example, companies have come together to form the QuEST Forum. The Quest Forum is a vehicle for telecommunications suppliers to share best practices based on quality principles such as the Baldrige criteria and quality standards-the ISO 9000 standards-tailored to the fiercely competitive worldwide telecommunications industry. This brings to mind Deming's admonition: "Collaboration before competition." Everyone wins.

On a personal level, I'd like to tell you a little about my work with the City of Wollongong in Australia. Representing the City of Madison, where I worked at the time, I assisted Wollongong with its quality and community excellence efforts. I shared with my Australian colleagues the many things that Madison learned as a pioneer in applying quality principles to city government. I'm very proud and gratified that Wollongong won the Australia Quality Award for these efforts.

My wife also just returned from Australia, where she has been working periodically over the last 20 years representing the state of Wisconsin in a partnership program with Australian organizations aimed at improving the lives of elderly persons in both countries.

The message of these examples is that in collaboration-as in trade-everyone wins. Both parties benefit. Collaboration before competition. We all have so much to learn from each other.

I mentioned earlier how the quality profession has evolved. We've talked about the broadening focus of quality-from our initial focus on quality of conformance, to quality of process, to quality of the bottom line.

The next logical step in this progression is toward a focus on quality of life. That's what I believe we as a profession are evolving toward. We've talked about the role of the quality professional in building strong communities. That is a quality of life issue for us that certainly will be an important factor in the future of our profession. There is another quality-of-life area in which I believe the quality profession will make a major contribution in the future. And that is in ensuring the health and viability of our natural world. The way we will do that is through the concepts of sustainability.

By sustainability I mean meeting our economic needs in such a way that we do not compromise the ability of future generations to take care of their needs. For our businesses, this means focusing on a triple bottom line comprising profits, people, and the planet we live on. All three elements. Nearly 150 years ago the wise Native American leader, Chief Seattle, said, "Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things connect."

Some people will ask, "But what does this have to do with the quality profession?" I think for us sustainability is a natural situation that complements our strengths. After all, one of the core concepts of quality improvement is the elimination of waste. Waste in all its forms. Quality professionals are also adept at systems thinking-at considering the bigger picture. Which makes the quality of things like the air we breathe and the water we drink a legitimate concern for quality practitioners. By focusing on these issues, the quality profession will leave a proud legacy.

Since September 11, our role as quality professionals and members of the larger community of quality leads us to have a particularly important contribution to make, as the public is seeking predictability, reliability, and safety. They want to trust the systems they work in, live in, and play in. That is where we come in-as we have the know-how to support the systems that make that possible, whether that is on the shop floor, in our schools, in hospitals, and even in our airport terminals as we take steps to enhance airport security and make it more reliable.

We have an obligation to the "ethic of quality." Not just to build it in to the products and services we provide, but to think about the implications of what we are doing not just on making the world a better market for products and to serve the consumer community but also to reinforce the importance of our work and its contribution to encouraging and supporting citizenship. The quality profession can and should be an essential ingredient in defining and building the kind of open, vibrant societies we all want to live and work in. What good is it to produce great products, to win accolades for the excellence of our products, if our employees are fearful for their safety when they walk to their cars in the parking lots of our businesses, or if they hesitate when they are considering putting their children in their local school systems or using their local health care providers. Quality has to permeate our communities at all levels, and we have the principles and practices to make that happen. In these times of increasing geopolitical tension it is especially important that we not shrink from these responsibilities.

There really is a higher purpose to what we do. That is why I'd like to close by reaffirming the value of the work you do as quality practitioners. Although our work as individuals is often obscure, our contributions as a group are not. We have a mark to make, a positive contribution to the expanding globalization taking place around us.

The mixing of cultures and traditions that I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks is still taking place today-not by the crossing of vast expanses of land and sea to trade in goods, but by the cross-fertilization of ideas. To me, this is the essence of globalization. We need to be open and welcoming to this exchange, to engage one another rather than withdraw. I hope I have given you some food for thought about ways that we as quality professionals can be fully engaged in this interchange in the years ahead. So that we can say with confidence that we transmitted our communities "greater and more beautiful than they were transmitted to us."

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