Have you heard of Management by Objectives?  It was first popularized by Peter Drucker in the 1950’s.  This is basic goal setting, where you pick (or agree on with your employees) your objectives and then drive everyone to the result.  Results are important, but so is keeping control of your organization.  The problem with Management by Objectives is that we don’t want to become overly focused on the goals to the point where we begin to ignore the environment around us.  What’s better than Management by Objectives?

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What is the first thing you think of when you hear the term “ISO 9001“? Lengthy policies, complicated procedures, and miles of forms to fill out?  A bureaucracy that rivals the US government in size and complexity? Intense, week-long audits that make waterboarding seem like spa therapy? You may be misinformed — ISO 9001 is based on sound business practices and is designed to help your organization improve incrementally.

Now, what do you think of when you hear the term “lean“? Are you thinking “no fat”, as in Jack Sprat?  Do the words “efficient”, “effective”, or “no waste” come to mind?

If we put the two terms together, we get Lean ISO 9001, which means a quality management system (QMS) with no fat…an ISO 9001 system that is efficient, effective, and reduces waste within your organization. Who wouldn’t want that?

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I recently had a wisdom tooth removed. I woke up one night with a tremendous stabbing pain in the right side of my jaw that radiated to my right ear. Naturally, I had this checked out immediately. While they said removing the tooth wasn’t an absolute necessity, my dentist (and the oral surgeon he referred me to) recommended extraction to prevent impaction, infection, and maybe worse.

The aftermath was much more painful than I thought it’d be. According to the oral surgeon, the tooth had taken root really well. Wisdom teeth I had out years before didn’t have the chance to firmly root themselves like this one. Because this tooth had been around a whole lot longer, the surgeon didn’t expect I’d heal quickly. “It should take about six weeks”, he said.

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The simplest and best definition of a procedure is “a documented process“. Think of any business process. Of what does that process consist? A number of ordered steps. Are those steps followed from start to finish and they’re done? Not exactly.

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According to the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA), an effective system of internal controls helps ensure that our organizational processes are functioning properly, that our financial information is reliable, and that we’re in compliance with applicable regulations. Businesses primarily implement internal controls systems to protect themselves from internal fraud and abuse, while many do so with regulatory or standards compliance in mind.

It is interesting to note that, in many cases, the internal control system at many companies consists of volumes of instruction-like procedures that document activities. If a company is taking the time and effort to develop a procedure-based financial control system, it’s worth the additional effort it takes to:

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The integration of technology into your workplace requires that you hire and maintain a highly-skilled, well-trained workforce.  Employees must be hired to fill immediate openings and training must be budgeted and completed to keep employees current with the growth requirements you’ve identified in your business plan.

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In part 1 of this two-part series, we discussed three important reasons why quality management systems (QMS) projects fail. Here are four other reasons:

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You’ve written a new procedure.  Your procedure review identified completeness, correctness, and subject matter applicability.  You feel you’ve caught your procedure writing errors and the procedure’s ready to go…but go where?  How do you determine if your new procedure is working?

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Not all processes require procedure writing.  There’s a lot of overhead associated with every business procedure you write.  Therefore, the more business procedures you write, the more procedures you have to edit, implement, train, audit, and

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Your process is not living up to expectations, so you’ve decided to implement standard operating procedures (SOP) to improve process consistency, compliance, and effectiveness.  However, that project is stalled: employees are not buying into your proposed changes, and management is growing impatient.

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