CQI AND IRCA STRATEGY 2030

Drivingprogress to2030

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DRashad Issa CQP FCQI, Chair of the CQI’s Board of Trustees,
reflects on the organisation’s progress since the CQI’s
centenary in 2019 – and looks ahead to what the future holds

uring 2019, our centenary year, the CQIand IRCA Board of Trustees set a new
direction for the Institute and the quality
profession. At its heart, our 2030 strategy
recognised that the profession needed torespond to a number of emerging macro trends, as well
as some rather sticky old challenges.
We realised that digitalisation had started to change
where and how quality is managed in organisations. We
understood that the sustainability agenda was changing
how society and customers view the quality of products,projects, services and organisations. The geopoliticalshifts towards protectionism had the potential tocreate fragility in supply chains and business models.
The ageing demographic and competition fromnew professional domains meant that we needed toattract new talent with more diverse educational andexperiential backgrounds. In addition, more work had
to be done to reposition quality as an enabling skillbuilder, for individuals and organisations.
The future presented golden opportunities for theprofession to help organisations respond to thesechallenges, using well-established quality principles
and methods.

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CQI AND IRCA STRATEGY 2030

TABLE 1
Quality capability: ownership for the management of quality has
been embedded in organisational value chains through the developmentof quality culture and capability.

Vision for
quality
management

Trust and guardianship: quality management is valued as the way to protect and enhanceorganisational reputation, mitigating risk of operational failure and supporting social andenvironmental goals by building quality into products, services, projects and processes.
Agility and adaptability: quality enables organisations to work at pace tode-risk transformation and achieve performance improvement, including throughnew digital technologies.
Strategic value: quality management has grown primarily from operational tostrategically significant.

Business partner: the profession is viewed as a business partner by organisations, enabling
superior quality culture and capability.
Context relevant: the profession enables organisations to adapt quality management to their
specific contexts and strategies.

Visionfor quality

Technologically agile: the profession is adaptable to technology in terms of digitalising quality
management and supporting digital transformation.
Societally positive: the profession responds proactively to the sustainability and circular
economy agendas.
Diverse and learning: the profession is inclusive and diverse to meet new challenges, andfocused on learning and improvement.

Organisations value CQI for helping develop quality capability as a tool for success, and thequality profession as the key enabler.

Vision forthe CQIand IRCA

The profession values the CQI for driving the profession forwards.
Members value the CQI as the inclusive go-to organisation.
Society values the CQI and quality as a force for sustainable good and improving quality of life.

From this, the 2030 strategy was born, designed todrive the kind of change articulated in Table 1 (above)as to how the quality profession, quality management
and the CQI and IRCA are perceived by society, in linewith our Royal Charter mission and values (Table 2).

Where we started andhow we are progressing

The 2030 strategy was designed with three key
phases over the 10-year period: 1) prepare for growth,2) transform value, and 3) globalise.
The ‘prepare for growth’ phase from 2020-2023 wasaimed at enhancing our capability to support members,
support the profession, and provide the digital
infrastructure that will help us support our members
and networks, wherever they are.

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However, almost immediately in 2020, life as weknow it changed as the pandemic took over. We faced
real challenges as individuals, organisations, quality
professionals, and the CQI and IRCA was no different.
While the pandemic challenged and isolatedmany of us, it helped accelerate the digitaltransformation, bringing the world closer, while helping
us, the CQI and IRCA, to appreciate and focus on ourgeographical presence.
I am pleased that we navigated those times safely
and successfully and, three years into our strategy,
we are seeing growth. Growth in membership, growth inlearner numbers, growth in customer satisfaction,
growth in revenue, growth in industry engagement,
growth in engagement with the global quality
community, and – the one of which I am super proud –CQI AND IRCA STRATEGY 2030

“The future presented
golden opportunities
for the profession”
growth in the number of volunteers.
We enhanced our governance framework, introduced
new platforms to increase knowledge sharing between
our global community through mentoring, elearningand our Quality Careers Hub, and the numerous online
branch and special interest group (SIG) events.
We developed a research capability to deliver unique
Quality 4.0 content, and expanded and updated theCQI Profession Map with new knowledge and skills
from digital to sustainability. We continued to shine
a light on the success stories from great quality
professionals worldwide through the International
Quality Awards, and built on this to establish the annual
Quality Live conference.
All of this helped us reach more professionals,
more organisations and more quality peer groupsand organisations.

TABLE 2Our
missionOur vision is a world in which organisationsof all types and sizes thrive by providing
outstanding value for customers,
stakeholders and society.
The CQI will play a key part in achieving
this through:● Collaboration: by working with business

Ourvisionleaders, managers and specialists to adopt
quality approaches that meet stakeholder
needs and create competitive advantages.

● Promotion: by championing quality

management as an evidence-based,outcomes-driven profession, recognisedfor helping organisations to learn,develop and prosper.

● Leadership: by growing the CQI intoa leading global body for quality andauditing professionals, and supporting
this community to continually improve,share expertise, and shape the future.

Strategy review outcomes 2023

While our strategy is constantly reviewed as we
progress year on year, we needed to take anotherdeep dive into the macro trends facing the profession,
our own capability, and assess whether we were stillon the right track.
As part of this process, we were very grateful for theinsight and feedback that we received from volunteers,
members and partners.
In terms of the macro trends outlined above, weconcluded that the digital and sustainability agendas
had accelerated in terms of importance and speedof development. We are encouraged by the polls ofquality professionals that have shown that members
are grasping and responding to the importance andrelevance of these topics.
These concepts are also requiring membership andprofessional bodies, such as the CQI, to innovate andadapt at a faster pace to provide trusted content, slick
collaboration tools, and the right balance of digitaland human experience.
However, the big ask from our members was that
we balance this focus on the profession with work
to promote quality management, the profession andthe CQI and IRCA to organisations, industry bodies
and policy makers. This included an appetite fortools and resources for quality professionals to use
to develop capability, culture and competence within
their wider organisations.

As a registered charity with a Royal
Charter, our mission is to champion quality
management for the benefit of society.

● Inclusion: we respect and value everyone,

support each other to do our best, andcollaborate to make a difference to society.

Ourvalues● Integrity: we act ethically, make decisions

in the best interests of our stakeholders,
and take ownership for our actions.

● Innovation: we invite new ways ofthinking that challenge the status quo,
help us to remain relevant, and ensure wecontinuously improve.

Rashad Issa: personal reflection
Strategy, by definition, isan action plan designed
to achieve a long-termaim. I define it as the organisational
dynamic ability to plan, respond,
and innovate in order to achievea desired outcome or aspiration.
Dynamic is the key attribute. It isessential that we understand what
our baseline is and have a plan
to develop it further. Innovating and responding tochallenges and opportunities will help us enhance ourplan and shift our focus as needed.

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CQI AND IRCA STRATEGY 2030

TABLE 3 – INTERNAL AND
EXTERNAL STRATEGIC FORCESThe next phase: 2024-2030

Taking all this into consideration, the Board of Trustees
approved a next-phase strategy in the second half of2023. We will now be working to tackle the external
challenges, as shown in Table 3 (opposite), and thefeedback provided by members and volunteers.

Three focus areas

Graph 1 (on page opposite) outlines our high-levelstrategy for our next phase, 2024-2030. This focuses on
three themes that work towards the visions outlinedin Table 1, namely the quality management discipline,
the quality professional, and the CQI and IRCA as aprofessional body.
First, to position quality management as a disciplinethat can help drive sustained success for businesses, wewill focus on increasing our collaboration with industry.
This will be done by developing an advocacy programmethat will help us promote the value of the profession
and professionals, through the CQI offerings, as go-tobusiness partners.
An important element of this will be aiming ourresearch capability to defining the value of quality
management, and developing tools that members
can use to educate and develop quality culture andcapability within their wider organisations.
This leads to the second focus – the qualityprofessional. We will continue to develop continuing
professional development (CPD) assets andopportunities to enhance skills through our Profession
Map and equip everyone with new knowledge and skills
to navigate the demanding challenge of supportingorganisational strategies and operations. The aim is toposition us, quality professionals, as business partners
who are engaged by our organisations from the designphase to help build quality in, rather than dealing
primarily with failure.
And finally, for the CQI and IRCA itself, we willcontinue to improve our infrastructure to better serve
our community, both in person and online. We willfurther upgrade our digital infrastructure to improve
our business intelligence so we can better understandTechnology: technology will have asignificant impact on where and how quality
is managed.

External
strategicforces

Value: the true value of quality management
and the quality professional is insufficiently
understood by leaders and organisations.
Skills and resources: tight labour markets andtechnological advances are generating skills
and resourcing gaps in the quality profession.
Relevance of the CQI: the traditional
membership offer is unlikely to sustain
the CQI.

IT: our IT stack is insufficient to support
future needs of customers and the strategy.

Internalstrategic
issues

IRCA: our audit offer needs to be updated toreflect external drivers for change.
Growth: we must focus our resources on
growing with purpose and impact against ourRoyal Charter.

the community that interacts with us. And we willcontinue to promote our brand to support the needsof quality professionals (assurers and improvers),
regardless of sector or geography.
Our re-focused strategy will help us build on thesuccesses and growth achieved between 2020 and2023. I am excited for what the future will bring. Our
member and partner voices were crucial in developing
this plan – and you will be crucial in helping us realise it.
I trust that our volunteers and professional networkgroups will be able to align their work to these themesin the coming years and continue to give feedback andengage with us as we evolve and continue to support
this passionate and dedicated community.

Rashad Issa: personal reflection
Our strategy is informed by our members
and volunteers and the challenges andopportunities they deal with daily. As amember-led organisation, the ripple of ourwork can be seen for years to come.
Share your stories and learnings, join yourlocal chapter, attend a SIG discussion, mentor
someone, or join our conferences. Most
importantly, take your one lesson learned
from any of these activities, and share it with colleagues andbusiness leaders. Help them reach that ‘a-ha’ moment!

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On behalf of the Board of Trustees,
I extend my gratitude to our executive
team, the CQI’s brilliant workforce, ourvolunteers, partners and our members
who contributed to and provided input
to our strategic plan. I look forward
to working with all of you as wecollectively promote the value of quality
management to society.

CQI AND IRCA STRATEGY 2030

GRAPH 1 – CQI AND IRCA STRATEGY 2024-2030
STRATEGICTHEMECRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORSSUBJECTVISIONSCQI MISSION
AND VISION

Corporate offer: we must have a corporate offer that supports
both the development of the quality profession and themanagement of quality more widely within organisations.

Qualitymanagement

Quality capability and culture support: we must haveorganisational quality capability assets that help quality
professionals develop the management of quality within
their organisations.
Non-quality professional (QP) assets: we must havecompetence assets to support non-QP roles and allied
professional domains.
Advocacy programme: we must have an advocacy programmethat promotes the value of the CQI, quality management andthe quality profession, underpinned by a compelling argument
for the value of quality management and the role of the quality
professional as a business partner.

Career pathways: we must have defined role profiles, career
pathways and learning pathways that encourages new talentand supports quality professionals through their career.

The quality
profession

CPD system: we must have the professional development
ecosystem and supporting infrastructure that disseminates
knowledge and good practice and leverages the collective
wisdom and experience within our membership for the benefitof the profession.

Vision for quality
management● Quality

capability● Trust andguardianship● Agility andQuality business partner: we must have a definition of therole of the quality profession that demonstrates its value as anenabling business partner for organisations and society.

To champion quality
management for thebenefit of society

adaptability● Strategic value

Vision forthe quality
profession/function● Business partner● Context relevant● TechnologicallyAudit and assurance offer: we must have an updated
assurance and audit offer that supports organisational risk andperformance management.

OUR MISSION

agile● Societally

positive

OUR VISIONOur vision is aworld in whichorganisations of
all types and sizes
thrive by providing
outstanding valuefor customers,
stakeholders andsociety● Diverse andlearning

Digital transformation: we must have secure IT systems that
support superior, scalable customer value.
Growth plan: we must have defined what we mean by growthand have implemented a plan to deliver growth that meets ourstrategic ambition.
Business intelligence: we must have a data- and insights-led
approach that supports the needs of the CQI.

The CQI
and IRCA

Brand identity: we must have a defined brand that
positions the Institute as relevant and valued to the profession
and society.

Vision for theCQI valued by:● Organisations● The profession● Members

OUR VALUES
Inclusion
Integrity
Innovation● SocietyESG strategy: we must have an environment, society andgovernance (ESG) strategy that supports the value anddevelopment of quality globally.
CQI capability: we must have the appropriate internal
capability and competence to deliver the strategy.

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