Time To End ‘Don’t Ask’, (Washington Post)…Editorial July 11, 2008, Pg. 16

The “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that continues the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the U.S. military was wrong when President Clinton signed it into law in 1993, and it’s wrong today. The only difference between then and now is that more people are now coming around to that conclusion.

Changing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy would be considered a fundamental change to the system.

Reverent Returns For Our Fallen Soldiers
(USA Today)…Madeleine Tavares, July 11, 2008 Pg.9

… Our tour of the facility included a stop in the morgue area. A stack of body armor vests and helmets caught my eye. Rodriguez told us that they belonged to military personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. She said they perform autopsies on all those killed after they arrive at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Her team also examines the body armor and suggests improvements. 

Rodriguez wanted me to know how respectfully those returning home were treated, and that each body was accompanied throughout the process by a servicemember. She wanted me to know about “the big old sergeant” who carefully presses the white T-shirts worn under the uniform jacket and how he meticulously tailors each jacket to fit the remains. “He wants them to look as good as they possibly can when they are returned home to their families,” she said.

Cost of Poor Quality includes the costs to prevent, find (appraise) and resolve failure. War is a failure cost, e.g., not being able to apply the other elements of power (diplomatic/political, economic, informational) to resolve the conflict.  Examining the body armor (see above) to identify improvements represents a cost of prevention.

However, the most important costs are unknown and unknowable — how do you put a price on all the effects associated with losing a loved one?  

ARTICLE: Quality and The Three Conversations, by Roberto Saco, ASQ President, Quality Progress Magazine, July 8.

Instead of taking on an operational definition of quality, Saco took a more indirect approach in describing three categorizations of quality he referred to as Big Q, little q and Really big Q …   “Think of it as a progression from the quality of products and services to the quality of management, and now to the quality of life itself.”

The Really Big Q is a needed direction for ASQ. When I first joined ASQ in 1991, quality was thought of as just relating to manufacturing areas only.  The quality Leadership Paradigm and Framework represents one of the better approaches for supporting “Really Big Q.” 

…  little q has to do with the problems of production and the tactical tools that lead to control and improvement. Big Q was Juran’s way of describing quality in a management setting: more strategic, more comprehensive and systemwide—in other words, quality management. It was in Juran’s genius to recognize that these are two different conversations. That they apply different languages, in different domains: the shop floor and the board room. And the two conversations, little q and big Q, are indeed complementary. You need both to make quality real, to make quality stick.

 …  What is really big Q? Beyond quality control and quality management, we need a better, more coherent conversation around sustainability and responsibility, and we need to do so at a higher level than just the organization or the firm. This is quality at the level of entire social systems, where issues like global warming, business ethics, sustainable economies, ecology and reciprocity are addressed. These are the issues of today.