This week I attended the EDEN Conference in Naples. I gave a talk on "Quality - Moving from controll to culture". In the centre there is the model of quality culture which has been developped by the European University Association which stresses that apart from documentation and process definition an effective quality management system needs elemtns of committment, attitudes, skills and values.

On basis of this model I have developped an approach which I call "Quality literacy" and which is comprised of four competencies which you need to develop an effective and relevant quality srategy for an organisation. The four elements are:
1. Quality knowledge - which tools/ instruments/ strategies are available?
2. Quality experiences - how to use them
3. Quality innovation ability - how to adapt existing strategies to my needs or how to invent suitable criteria for my situation, and
4. Quality analysis - to be able to develop my own quality objectives and goals

It is interesting but I had alot of feedback from people saying that they find especially the elements of "quality literacy" very helpful as a concept to reflect on what is missing in their own organisation or their own quality development process.

The next step is now that I want to develop a clear description of the before mentioned competences in which they are described as competences with different levels of expertise - niveaus.
Then an organisation could be assessed against their expertise in all these different competence niveaus and learning / development need would become apparent.