Storytelling: Revealing the Future in the Present

Strategic planning at the American Society for Quality underwent a dramatic departure in the current planning cycle for the 2003-04 year. Responding to realities of life in the 21st century, ASQ set aside years of traditional annual planning practice and instead adopted a "living strategy" approach. This approach recognizes that long-range plans are becoming increasingly incongruous in a rapidly changing world. And it acknowledges that, in a sense, we are already living in our future. The seeds are already there, expressed in behaviors and activities that exemplify what we as an organization want to become and where we want to go.

If indeed our future is being forged right here and now in our present, only a living, growing, dynamic strategy will allow us to realize it. We must act wisely in order to let the preferred future unfold to our advantage. The challenge is to open direction-setting to everyone interested in the future of quality and to put in place the structures and mechanisms that allow us to be more like what we want to be.

There are a million stories to be told about what quality is, and more important what it can be and what actions quality professionals are taking to make it happen. Here are some of those stories—drawn from the here and now—that give a glimpse of what our future might be.