Organizations and their products constantly change. Quality professionals embrace the change process through continuous improvement, a method to anticipate, plan, and replan. We talk in terms of improvements, controls, processes, outputs, and outcomes, but we seldom call it “change.” We must recognize that change leadership and change management are vital quality skills like auditing, quality management, and quality control.

The “aha!” moment about this came for me when I attended the National Defense University (NDU) Information Resources Management College (IRMC) course, Strategies for Process Improvement. It focused on organizations’ tendency to change, obstacles and challenges to change, and change methodology. Before taking this course, I had led many program and system changes, but didn’t call it change leadership. I wrote a quality plan, sought “management support,” and implemented the plan. I’d never considered movement from a current state to a new one as a process. Now I view all quality improvements from two aspects. First, the goals of the improvement, and second, the change process needed to lead.

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