Can you report bad news?

Quality professionals have to report bad news. It's part of the job.

That's why many organizations make Quality report directly to the CEO or General Manager, instead of tucking the department under Operations or Engineering. It's not that Quality's headcount or budget are so large that they have to be managed at that level. The idea is that Quality has to report the true state of things, without the risk that someone will hide the news.

"The widgets coming off Line 2 are defective, and if we ship them we risk a $2-million recall in the next six months."

"The prototype Mark IV Fantabulator still fails five of its fouteen critical tests and leaks radiation all over the user."

"The packaging machine in Logistics is out of alignment again, even though they just fixed it last week."

These are things the organization needs to know, even though they might embarrass someone. And it is Quality's job to speak up.

Or is it?

Last week I wrote about some hiccups recently as ASQ rolled out an updated procedure for electing officers in the geographical Sections. On the whole it wasn't a dramatic topic. Then after I posted the article here, I wrote a notification to post in myASQ, which is ASQ's in-house social media platform. I started with a brief and—I hoped—non-threatening introduction:

Was anybody else as confused as I was by the roll-out of the new procedure for electing Section officers? We heard that there were changes coming, but my Section (at least) didn't get specific information until we had already missed some deadlines. I don't know if anyone else had the same experience. But is there a chance that the organization could do a Lessons Learned analysis on this roll-out, in order to make future ones go better?

I talk about it in a little more detail here:....

Then I gave a link to last week's article. In other words, I tried to keep it as bland and professional as I could, in the hopes of starting some kind of discussion about what went on.

Within fifteen minutes, an administrator deleted my post.

I post a lot on myASQ, and this is the second time I've had a post deleted. The first time was just about a year ago, when I posted an article critical of the Board of Directors. That time, the removed post was a link to this article here; and I discussed its removal very briefly in this one here. In a nutshell, last year's post was taken down ostensibly for violating the myASQ Terms of Service; but in fact it didn't violate the Terms of Service that were current when I posted it. Those Terms were updated 24 hours later, specifically to forbid any discussion of the things I was talking about.*

This time around? I got an email yesterday from ASQ HQ, six days after the post went down, with a partial explanation. The heart of it is a reminder that myASQ is the wrong forum for complaints about procedures that aren't working. The email suggested that I contact this office or that officer instead.

Public or private?

In principle it makes sense to specify that this channel is only for this kind of communication, but in this case I wonder. If I contact an office or an officer, the ensuing discussion will be private. But when the topic is a failed procedure—and a procedure that affects many people—I think the communication really has to be public.

The point is that people are already discussing the issue. When I asked, "Was anybody else as confused as I was?" it was a rhetorical question. I'd already talked to people in other Sections who had the exact same experiences and the exact same questions. So in a sense I was asking my questions on their behalf as well. In my reply to the email from HQ, I tried to make the point that a lot of people in the Society are already whispering in the corners about this very topic. If ASQ came out and addressed it publicly, they would silence a lot of whispering. And they would give members a renewed confidence in ASQ as an organization. It would be a win all the way around.

Of course—I tried to reassure the officer who wrote to me—discussing the issue publicly never means naming names! No one expects the Society to say "It's all the fault of John Jones and Fred Smith." But it is always possible to say "A Member misunderstood the procedure and therefore did X; then an Administrator followed up using the wrong template and did Y. We are currently investigating how to error-proof the process so that it is impossible to make those mistakes again." And, as I say, it would boost confidence to do so.

I don't know if I was persuasive or not. I guess we'll see.

Where do we report bad news?

Ultimately that's the important question: Where do we report bad news?

• We have to report it somewhere, because that's what we Quality professionals do.
• ASQ has urged us for years to channel all our communications into myASQ, so my first guess is that that's where we should report administrative failures like this one. 
• On the other hand, if myASQ is the wrong place to report bad news, then that's fine too—so long as we know what channel to use instead. And for practical reasons, it should be a more-or-less public channel, one that other people can consult. Is there another channel inside ASQ with these features? Or how about LinkedIn? Facebook? The New York Times? 

I'm ready to use any of them, so just let me know. 

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* Yes, I downloaded copies of the Terms of Service document—with date stamps—before and after, just to be sure.