When I first came to Bizmanualz, I was unfamiliar with quality management, Lean, Six Sigma, ISO 9000, and the like. After all, I was hired for writing, marketing, and website upkeep, not for my quality background. And I imagine many company employees who are not part of the quality department are in a similar situation.

However, if your entire staff doesn’t understand the utility of a quality management system, how can they be expected to implement it or even buy in to the idea of it? That’s where the internal communication comes in. How do you communicate quality to your employees? In my last post, I showed you our scoreboard, where we keep track of successes, areas of improvement, project status, etc. It’s a great way to communicate where we are and where we’re going.

ISO 9001 Internal Auditing Certificate

But there’s another method we use that ensures every single one of us understands (and uses!) our quality management system. First of all, each employee takes an Internal Auditor training class. We’re at a bit of an advantage since we conduct Internal Auditor training courses here in our office, but similar methods can be employed by your company. Find a local training class and send your employees a few at a time as you have the resources available. These classes give employees a good understanding of the process. Ours gives a thorough examination of the ISO 9001:2008 standard.

Once we complete the class, we’re scheduled to conduct Internal Audits, which Bizmanualz conducts every other month. Employees rotate, so each has the opportunity to audit and learn about different areas of quality within the company. It’s so much easier to buy in to a quality system when you can see and examine how it really works in other departments. I didn’t understand the importance of ours when I first got here. After looking at it first-hand, I realized how it streamlines everything, from producing our policy and procedure manuals to following up on customer feedback.

Is your company struggling with employees who grudgingly go along with the QMS but don’t understand it? What ways do you communicate the importance of quality to them? I’d love to hear your ideas, and I’ll follow up with more when I hear them!

We’ve made several web-related changes at Bizmanualz in the last few weeks. Some are subtle while others are more pronounced. These changes are based on direct customer feedback or as a result of our effort to make the shopping experience more convenient.

The first change we made was to add download option. In the past, customers would have to call us to setup a download if they purchased one of our policies and procedures manuals. But now, that option is available right on the product pages. And, depending on customer response, we plan to add that functionality to our management procedures series in the near future as well.

The second change is not directly on the Bizmanualz website. Earlier this month we launched a Spanish website, to make the shopping experience friendlier for our Spanish speaking customers. The new Spanish website – www.politicasyprocedimientos.com – showcases our products in Spanish – Manual del Empleado and ISO 22000 Seguridad de los Alimentos.

We also added the latest book from Steve Page, an acclaimed policies and procedures expert. Writing Exceptional Policies and Procedures helps you create in-depth and practical policies and procedures that are easy-to-read, clear, consistent, and require minimal training.

As always, the idea is to add small improvements one step at a time with an aim to continually improve. The primary goal is to meet or exceed customer expectations. If you have any suggestions or ideas for improvement we’ll be happy to note and look into them.

Are you frustrated by problems that seem impossible to solve?  In today’s economic climate problems abound.  Persistent deficits, complex solutions, and special interests all combine to create major headaches.  Why is solving problems so hard? 

One reason could be as – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said “the solution of every problem is another problem.”  Yet Problems also create opportunities.  So perhaps it has to do with your paradigm and depends on how you look at problems.  The impossible is a paradigm – Change your mind and you change your performance. 

To the wise, life is a problem;
to the fool, a solution.
            – Marcus Aurelius

Process improvement rules can guide us to finding the solution.  The trick is in having the right frame of mind and discipline to use them.  For example, one simple rule to finding the root cause of a problem is to ask “why” five times to get to the root cause.  The first answer is never the whole story. 

How about “do it right the first time.”  If it was done right in the first place then you wouldn’t need to make excuses for fixing it.  Perhaps you didn’t have time to do it right, then when do you think you will have time to fix it?  Either way you should correct the errors immediately.

So you asked why five times, which is giving you a pretty good idea what the problem is.  What is the solution?  It is time to involve everyone – we are smarter as a group than a single individual.  But the group comes up with ideas that have been tried before.  You need to reconsider rigid thoughts, situations change.  Try to look at it from a new paradigm to eliminate the impossible thinking.

Once you have narrowed the ideas down to possible solutions, pick the simplest answers.  Mother Nature may appear complex but it is usually the simple solution that solves the problem.  At one time people thought the planets moved in circular orbits, which caused astronomers to create complex calculations with odd retrograde motions to explain planetary motion.  Then Kepler derived that the planets moved in elliptical orbits.  At first he rejected the idea because he had previously assumed this to be too simple a solution.  But he reconsidered such rigid thoughts and he was proven correct.

Complex solutions can also mean expensive.   In Lean Thinking we like to use our mind more than your money.  It is amazing how simple and inexpensive many solutions can really be.  Why do people insist on spending hundreds of billions of dollars to solve problems?  Because it is much easier to spend money then it is to change people’s paradigms.  If you think a problem is impossible, then you also might think the solution is complex and you will need to spend a lot of money to solve it.

The goal of continuous improvement is just that continuous improvement, not delayed perfection.  Continuous improvement implies we are always working toward perfection but never reaching it.  There is always an improvement.  So accept the fact that it is a process, make time for it, nothing is impossible, and discipline yourself to do it right the first time.  Otherwise fix it immediately when it’s discovered, involve the group in the solution and select simple solutions to resolve the answer to the fifth why you asked.  Problems are also opportunities waiting for you.

 Ten Golden Rules of Continuous Improvement

1. Problems create opportunities
2. The impossible is a paradigm – Change your mind to change your performance
3. Ask why five times to get to the real answer
4. Eliminate excuses, do it right the first time
5. Correct errors immediately
6. Involve everyone – we are smarter as a group than a single individual
7. Reconsider rigid thoughts, situations change
8. Think simple, not perfect solutions
9. Use your mind more than your money
10. The Goal: Continuous improvement over delayed perfection