Author Archives: greg

#36 – REMOTE AUDITING -THE RISE OF THE CYBER AUDITOR – ROBERT GIBSON

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It is hard to find an industry or profession that has not used the technological advancements of the last 10 years to improve its systems and services.  The risk of failure and falling behind competitors has driven many companies towards the rapid adoption of new tools in order to bring an innovative approach to their operations.  The products are innovative and so, in turn, are the processes of the organisations that use them to improve their performance. Continue reading →

#36 – AGAINST ALL STANDARDIZATION? – UMBERTO TUNESI

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Umberto Tunesi pixWe’ve brought to believe that standardization is a great achievement, and certainly it is, especially in more and more global markets where many, many factors of difference determine their effectiveness.

But let’s look more closely at standardization’s facts, rather than at standards.

DAILY EXAMPLES
I’m thinking of the following practically daily examples:

Computer and mobile phones keyboards and touch screens: you are used to one, you go to another and you’re lost, or take much time to understand how it works. Continue reading →

#36 – TRIBAL KNOWLEDGE – MARK MOORE

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Mark MooreAnd Now It’s Too Late

What started out as an idea for a single post is probably going to take several to cover the topic at hand.  The risk we’re talking about here is …

TRIBAL KNOWLEDGE

WHAT IS TRIBAL KNOWLEDGE?
I’ve been doing a little research via some professional chat forums, and the first question to come up was, “What’s your definition of Tribal Knowledge?”

Well, the way I’m using it here I mean the experience and skill that you rely on to run your organization an projects that is locked away in some long-term employee’s head and if documented at all (which is rare), the documentation is sketchy at best and probably can only be deciphered by the person holding the knowledge in the first place.  It exists in any organization that has been around for a while, and it’s probably a far bigger risk than you might consider it to be.  In fact, I believe the very nature of Tribal Knowledge makes it a ‘top 5’ that is hardly ever documented in your risk register. Continue reading →

#36 – BALDRIGE AND ISO 9000: UNIQUE BREEDS – T. DAN NELSON

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T. Dan Nelson - Screen Shot 2013-09-06 at 8.16.28 PMBaldrige and ISO 90001?  They can’t be twins.  They’re different animals.

When ISO 9000 was first released as an international standard in 1987, it was not without an American competitor: the national Malcolm Baldrige Award.  Though ostensibly not intended to compete with ISO 9001, Baldrige did compete with ISO 9001.  Baldrige has been hindering an understanding of ISO 9001 and how to apply it since the nearly simultaneous release of these two quality initiatives in the late 80s.  Born nearly at the same time, it seems quality professionals often treat them as twins. Continue reading →

#35 – USING ISO 9001:2015 AS FOUNDATION FOR SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS – IAN ROSAM

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Ian rosam“A Business System to minimise unintended and maximise intended outcomes”

Ever wondered why, after poor business performance, the subsequent investigation usually reveals that some people knew about the risks before they materialised.

Just think about well known disasters such as Deepwater Horizon, Stafford Hospital, Pike River, the Financial crisis.  In all these cases subsequent investigations highlighted methods of work and people’s behaviour that contributed, either partially or significantly, to the event taking place.  Whilst this is partially caused by compliance failures, they are more frequently systemic or behavioural ones. Continue reading →