Instead of evolving, why don’t we enhance or promote the skills that we already have.

Understandly there seems to be the need to always evolve in a partciular profession. What if we took a pause for a moment and take a look at what we are trying to evolve into. From a quality engineering professional point of view it seems we want to start to be responsible for an ever ending more things like for example I’ve seen mentions of a Quality culture. If you look at the definition of culture it’s about ‘the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular group of people’. In other words, the people working at your organisation. My feeling on the matter is that unless you are a senior executive or have influence about the values at your company, then it’s not your responsibility to create any type of culture, even if you shove words like quality, continuous improvement or risk infront of it. You can contribute to it of course, but it’s not your responsibility.

I talk of risk culture as I have been involved in creating risk registers for a department and it only works with everyone leaning in. It is not my responsibility to ensure everyone understands risk and contributes to proactive risk management. I can advocate for it. I can champion it. I can set the example and raise risks and issues. However, there is a line that must be drawn.

What if

What if we started to not evolve into something else, but enhance and promote the skills that we already have as quality engineers. This then translating into sensible roles and responsibilities in job descriptions.

Skills like:

• Analytical reasoning — draw logical conclusions from a set of information.
• Independent/Critical thinking — thinking for oneself, rather than influenced by external factors
• Effective communication — giving constructive feedback with empathy.
• Attention to detail.
• Growth mindset — setbacks allowing you to move forward effectively.

The reason why this blog post has arisen is that I have been there trying to do too much. Trying to be responsible for things that actually are not my responsibility at all. I’d encourage anyone reading this to take a step back and think about what are they responsible for? Is it with you or is it someone else? Then from there you can start to let go and zone in on your core skills.