Drive improvement through the management system

The aim of ISO 9001 is to drive improvement through the management system. Going through the process to get ISO Certified without taking any of the benefits of the certification would be a futile exercise. And this is irrespective of the cost to get ISO Certification.

ISO 9001 consulting is exciting when companies seek to improve. If you are seeking which ISO certification is best for your business, that means that you are taking the time to take a step back, and see how you can improve your business.

Sources for improvement

The current version of the ISO 9001:2015 standard is full of opportunities to help you structure your business in a way that helps you to drive improvement through the management system. You can read more about an example for a marketing agency getting ISO certified to get a more detailed description of each source for improvement.

Quality Policy & Objectives

True leaders are inspired by a vision, and they use their business to reach that vision. Successful people know that they must have SMART goals to reach their vision. The quality policy is used by true leaders to inspire their fellow teams to work towards the same ideal. Based on the quality policy, they create quality objectives that drive their business to succeed.

Mistakes (Corrective actions and NCs)

We are all human, and mistakes do happen. And that should not be a problem, given that we take the time to learn from each of our mistakes. This learning curve can be captured as part of organisational knowledge. “Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me” can be used as a valid metaphor here. If we find something that can be improved (Corrective action), or if we make a mistake with our clients/suppliers (Non-conformity [NC]), leaders must strive to continually improve their business.

Management Review Meeting

Management Review meetings are done to ensure that the requirements of interested parties are continually being met.

Leadership to drive improvement through the management system

The current standard encourages us to drive business by data, not by feelings and just intuition.

By intelligently designing your processes, you can make use of international software like zoho, or xero to gather information automatically. Through these software, by performing the tasks in the regular day-to-day operations of the business, and by taking the time to custom dashboards, you will have critical information regarding your business within a click of a button. You can also use Google data studio to create excellent dashboards.

Imagine you are driving a car, and the dials on your dashboard don’t work. You wouldn’t know your speed, the level of fuel in your tank. You are just driving along, keeping only scattered notes on when you last stopped for fuel. That would either result in you continually stopping without fuel. Or that you’d stop for fuel too frequently. Both will waste your time.

Running your business without a dashboard of important data will lead to similar wasteful results.

Moreover, it is important that you implement the projects that you know will help improve your business. Use project management tools, like trello to follow up on the action items, to ensure that actions are completed.

Conclusion

In one of the clauses for ISO 9001, the standard has the requirement to find evidence that leaders of the business are actively involved in improvement projects. If the leaders are truly involved, there would be evidence scattered throughout the business processes, and this would be the easiest requirement to reach.

If on the other hand, the leaders are stuck in a status quo and presume that everything is working just fine, there would be no improvement. Some think that it would be wise “not to change a winning team”. And yet that is a sure formula for failure. The only constant is change, and if you are not adapting to new requirements within your internal and external locus of control, your business is destined to fail.

If you are seeking to improve your business get in touch now, we’d love to help.