The Year of Living Quality

2010 is a droplet trembling on the rim of space-time, and I think I’m ready for it to fall.

This is the one time of year that I feel justified in reviewing the preceding 12 months and asking navel-gazing questions about accomplishments, miracles, snafus and “I’d-better-not-let-that-happen-again” craziness.

It’s an arguably cerebral manifestation of our chronobiological urges: noting growth, counting up hard-won provisions, strategizing world domination, or maybe just dominion over our own little pillow-fort in the corner. But almost without exception, it is utterly life-affirming: There is a future and we expect to participate. 

That future is also likely to be full of challenges: we know this. If 2010 has taught us anything, it’s—how to meet 2010’s challenges. But history has shown (heh!) that what we notice about the past can help us prepare for or even affect what’s to come. We actually seem wired to think that way.

Good thing, too, because that wiring is the foundation of quality assurance. We know the outcome we’d like. We notice what gets us to the outcome. We do those things, reviewing and tweaking until we get the desired effect. Aaand repeat.

But we’re lucky enough also to have been packaged with rational intent. And we can assure the quality of our craft by recognizing and engaging that intent, with all its nuanced impact, and making sure that the people, systems, workspaces and tools, and policies we’re working with support it. So simple, so difficult, and worth everything if you want next year’s review to top this one’s.

So I’m off to look over the year’s work; the good, the painful, the stuff that makes me want to change my identity and run off to another country, and the satisfying. I’ll survive it and be the better for it. So will you.

As cornball as the sentiment may seem, the year to come is the very definition of potential and hope and opportunity. Let’s make it quality.

[image: pagedooley]