{"id":26,"date":"2015-03-30T10:11:16","date_gmt":"2015-03-30T10:11:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pinnacleeg.com\/iso\/iso-9001-myth-2-say-what-you-do-do-what-you-say\/"},"modified":"2015-04-08T12:46:47","modified_gmt":"2015-04-08T12:46:47","slug":"iso-9001-myth-2-say-what-you-do-do-what-you-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.pinnacleeg.com\/iso\/iso-9001-myth-2-say-what-you-do-do-what-you-say\/","title":{"rendered":"ISO 9001 Myth #2 – \u201cSay What You Do & Do What You Say\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

A second myth that plagues ISO 9001 implementation<\/a> efforts is the clich\u00e9 \u201csay what you do and do what you say.\u201d\u00a0 While the first myth<\/a> is responsible for misconception regarding the amount, structure, and format of documentation needed for ISO 9001 certification<\/a>, Myth #2 misleads organizations as to the purpose and true intent of ISO 9001.\u00a0 In a nutshell, if a company isn\u2019t effectively meeting customer expectations and isn\u2019t achieving its other business goals and objectives, then saying what it does and doing what it says is irrelevant.<\/p>\n

Believing they must write down everything they do, many companies engage in a massive documentation exercise<\/a>.\u00a0 \u201cSay what you do and do what you say\u201d has led companies to the misconception that their mission in implementing ISO 9001<\/a> is to document everything that everyone does; and that the resulting documentation will adequately and even impressively represent how the business operates.\u00a0 While implementing ISO 9001<\/a> is a time to document how you do business, it\u2019s not a time to illustrate every possible detail of the company’s daily activities.<\/p>\n

The fact is, having every activity in the company documented (e.g. detailed work instructions) doesn\u2019t ensure these activities are actually performed effectively, efficiently or even consistently.\u00a0 Paper is not a replacement for motivated, competent, and capable employees who work within a well-designed process.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, by assuming \u201csay what you do and do what you say\u201d implies that more documentation is better; companies often paint themselves in a corner.\u00a0 Frequently they develop sets of procedures that actually stifle the creativity and flexibility of a talented workforce.\u00a0 In our ISO 9001 consulting<\/a> practice, we typically see this scenario at clients that have an ineffective human resource development process (e.g. training, competency development, etc.) and have tried to compensate by developing detailed work instruction and other documents for every activity.<\/p>\n

A successful ISO 9001 implementation<\/a> should begin with the identification and rationalization of KEY business processes (not procedures).\u00a0 Developing an ISO 9001 quality management system<\/a> presents a company with the occasion to bring key business processes to light and represent them in a way that is understood clearly by everyone in the company.\u00a0 To put it simply, you need to be focused on value-added content when creating your ISO 9001 documentation<\/a>, not just large amounts of content.<\/p>\n

To begin with, the minimum requirement for ISO 9001:2008<\/a> is a quality manual, six documented procedures (I call these support processes), and 21 records<\/a>.\u00a0 This requirement does not assume any particular organizational size or complexity, so it stands to reason that even large organizations could potentially develop a fairly lean set of documents.\u00a0 It\u2019s also possible for a smaller organization to have fairly complex operations, resulting in more documentation.\u00a0 In my experience, every company will exceed the minimum ISO 9001 documentation<\/a> requirement.<\/p>\n

Keep in mind that many processes and systems in your business are not unique.\u00a0 How you manage them and their interaction with unique processes defines your business operating system.\u00a0 The ISO 9001 quality management system simply provides the foundation and structural framework on which to build your business operating system<\/a>.<\/p>\n

ISO 9001 doesn\u2019t require a high level of detailed documentation.\u00a0 Instead, the intent of ISO 9001 is to first accurately describe the processes which make up your business operating system and demonstrate their relationship to and interaction with one another.\u00a0 The second intent is to demonstrate that your business operating system<\/a> is effective at exceeding customer expectations and meeting internal business objectives.\u00a0 If you cannot clearly and positively demonstrate that you have fulfilled these two intents, then saying what you do and doing what you say does not matter.<\/p>\n

Please stay tuned for my next installment in this ISO 9001 Myth series:\u00a0 “ISO 9001 Myth #3 – Failing ISO 9001 Certification.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Kirill Liberman, President<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A second myth that plagues ISO 9001 implementation efforts is the clich\u00e9 \u201csay what you do and do what you say.\u201d\u00a0 While the first myth is responsible for misconception regarding the amount, structure, and format of documentation needed for ISO 9001 certification, Myth #2 misleads organizations as to the purpose and true intent of ISO […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,5,7,10,12,13,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-as9100","category-continual-improvement","category-iso13485","category-iso9001","category-pinnacle-enterprise-group","category-quality-management-system","category-tl9000","category-ts16949"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pinnacleeg.com\/iso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pinnacleeg.com\/iso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pinnacleeg.com\/iso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pinnacleeg.com\/iso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pinnacleeg.com\/iso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.pinnacleeg.com\/iso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44,"href":"http:\/\/www.pinnacleeg.com\/iso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions\/44"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pinnacleeg.com\/iso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pinnacleeg.com\/iso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pinnacleeg.com\/iso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}