Resolutions 2011

I used to think that New Year’s resolutions were pretty much a waste of time. Most people that I know still do. I vow to be good; I resolve to quit eating; I resolve to quit smoking:   I resolve to get more exercise.  I resolve to stop being sarcastic. Yeah, yeah, and ...yeah.

But over the 5 or 6 years, the concept of resolutions started to make a little more sense. New Year's Resolutions are just a variation on the theme of setting Objectives and Goal.
I mentioned before that CMPT`s quality system has been certified to ISO9001: (2000 - 2008) since 2002. Every year in October we set quality and programmatic goals and objectives and then monitor to ensure that we meet our goals.  When we started we did this so that we would continue to get certified, but after a while we saw the value in the exercise, and did it for us... to keep CMPT on path and on track.  And it seems to actually be effective.

So it started to make sense that if we can do this positively and painlessly for a proficiency testing program, we should be able to do the same thing for the Program Office for Laboratory Quality Management, and for my teaching commitments, and also for the medical laboratory at which I worked as a medical director for Quality. And again, the experience reinforced itself by actually being productive. 

Go figure.  Those guys like Deming and Crosby actually knew what they were talking about.

And now that MMLQR goes though its first New Year,  it is time to start setting some objectives for it too.  Actually MMLQR has only been running for 6 months, but this is sort of like setting or re-setting an organization's fiscal or operational calendar.

Just to make sure we are on the same page, I use the term Objective to mean a large scale outcome that may take a number of steps to reach, and I use the term Goal to identify the individual steps.  To be credible the objectives should be achievable and the goals should be measurable.

So here are my goals and objectives for MMLQR for calendar year 2011

Objective 1:

MMLQR will be recognized as an active and credible and readable website to promote diversity of opinion and discussion for the full range of issues that surround quality management of medical laboratories.


Goal 1
To meet the measure of "recognized" I will promote MMLQR to support current readership and to encourage a broader audience.

Goal 2
To meet the measure of ``active``, I will generate at least one new entry each week.

Goal 3
To meet the measure of ``credible`` I will actively seek review and comment by others with long term interest in medical laboratory Qualitology.  This might be in the form of another shot at an electronic survey, or in the form of an external-internal audit.

Goal 4
To meet the measure of ``readable`` I will reduce the number of spelling and editing errors per entry.  (This one will be tough because I am terrible at proof-reading).

Goal 5
To meet the measure of ``diversity of opinion and discussion" I will invite and publish comments and commentary of differing opinion (as long as words like "jerk" and "pinhead" are not included) . 

Goal 6
To meet the measure of "full range of issues that surround quality management"  I will expand the topics covered including more commentary on politics and quality partners, as I see it.

So that is a good start with an achievable objective and a series of measurable goals.  MMLQR is a young start-up which has met reached a certain level of fragile stability (similar to how they describe the Canadian economy).  Going to the next step will take the discipline of setting some objectives and goals and PDSA.  We will see how I do by the end on the year.

See you in 2011.

m