Let’s consider for a moment the discipline we need to be quality professionals. It might take years to master our profession, but even when we have, we must not stop practicing and exercising it. Rather like being linguists or musicians, we must keep performing quality to keep ourselves fit for it.

I take the title of this column from Alfred Tennyson’s poem, “Ulysses.” The entire line reads, “How dull it is to pause, to make an end, / To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!” Perhaps due to laziness or poor (spiritual?) resources, we can easily fall into a kind of somnolence in our activities. Our discipline falters. We stop practicing.

In view of the above, if I were steering the technical action group in charge of updating ISO 9001 for its release next year, I would push the standard’s requirements toward monitoring quality awareness, including implementing continual improvement whenever possible, instead of dedicating the group to five-year amendments that till now have shown themselves to be marginally significant.

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