We tied up last year in a neat little bow, talking about how stories define ourselves and our work; waste is waste, no matter your political leanings; and putting numbers from the news in context.

A few years ago I wrote about a Facebook exchange between two friends of mine that upset me because one of my friends resorted to name-calling instead of addressing the other friend’s arguments. In retrospect, that was mild.

It’s no wonder people are scared of process. When we have a large project or goal, we assume that the process to complete that work must be equally large. That is daunting. We’d rather just do it.

I still love to hold and read physical books (as opposed to audible or Kindle). I don’t know how many books I added to my library this year, but it was a lot. I thought I’d share some good ones that I’d recommend you add to your reading list for 2019.

Back in January 2009, I wrote an article for Quality Digest titled “ISO 9001 Documentation Is Like a Box of Chocolates.” Her

I tend to be a holiday slacker, but this year I’m really sitting it out. No fingering handmade crafts at pop-up fairs, no high-calorie marathons with my oven, not even a sprig of holly on my door.

The control chart is at the heart of the very definition of quality. It is central to building, maintaining, and predicting quality into the future. However, control charts today, more often than not, are misused and misunderstood.

When graduate student Atis Degro got an email about a George Mason University course in resilience last year, he had to look up what that meant.

Psychology is an important element in organizational excellence for managers. In particular, the ability to face one’s fears, develop resilience, and adapt to change fosters success for a manager as well as for the company and all its employees.

An industry, and even more so any individual company, is only as strong as its pipeline of incoming talent. This week on QDL we looked at this topic from a few different angles. Here’s what we covered at greater length: