#41 – WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW COULD KILL – YOUR PROJECT – MARK MOORE

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Mark MooreI’m going to leverage one more story about my daughter, because it clearly illustrates a problem my wife and I could have avoided had we not been so intent at placing our own interpretation and ‘knowledge’ on the situation.

She must have been about two when this started.  She’d come to us a little frightened and start to explain what was bothering her.  She kept repeating the word ‘because’ and we naturally asked, ‘Because what?’  The short version is that my wife finally figured out she was saying ‘big claws’ and this was a result of some nightmare.  It wasn’t the two of us who did the deducing … instead my daughter (obviously frustrated with her idiot parents) used a different word.  She said ‘fingernails’ instead … and the barrier was broken. Continue reading →

#41 – CYBER SECURITY IS NOW JOB #1 – NIST CYBER SECURITY FRAMEWORK – GREG HUTCHINS

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Thirty years ago Ford Motor Company had a tag line in all its advertising:

Quality is Job #1!

Great tagline.  Now we believe that everyone’s new tagline is:

Cyber Security is Job #1!

Greg Hutchins pixThe US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has just finalized its much expected cyber security risk management framework.

President Obama directed NIST to develop a risk management   framework to secure infrastructure vital to the US and for that matter’s any country’s critical infrastructure such as banking, electrical power grid, water, and transportation. Continue reading →

The Process Approach of ISO 9001 by T. Dan Nelson

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Two enormous challenges confront the quality management community–and these challenges affect quality consultants, organizational management and quality auditors. There is an urgent need to abolish a mindset pervading the community for decades, one that has reduced quality to its current confused state. Conversely, it is necessary to promote a new mindset that will bring glory to quality management, Deming and Shewhart, and ISO 9001.

“Until those in the quality community unequivocally accept and promote the process approach the value of ISO 9001 will continue to evade organizations hoping to find value in their ISO 9001-certified quality management systems. For those customer-focused quality professionals who understand and promote the process approach, the future is bright. Although the process approach isn’t new, it’s the future of quality management.”

#40 – REKINDLE YOUR VOCATIONAL ROMANCE – DR. TRUDY

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Dr. TrudyThere was an old Chinese saying, “the biggest fear in a man’s life is choosing the wrong profession; the biggest fear in a woman’s life is choosing the wrong husband.”

In the old days in the West or the East, women were deprived the opportunity of receiving education and job opportunities.  With the high divorce rate in modern societies, women’s career choices are no longer limited by choosing a spouse.  Under extremely demanding global economy and competition, both men and women are subject to tremendous demands for productivity, performance, and preeminent innovation in the workplace.  Continue reading →

#40 – WILL THE REAL USERS OF ISO 9001 PLEASE STAND UP? – T. DAN NELSON

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T. Dan Nelson - Screen Shot 2013-09-06 at 8.16.28 PMIn America, the law is written in English.  Lawyers speak English. Yet they require training for how to properly understand and apply the law.

ISO 9001 is no different in this regard.  The standard assumes proper training to understand ISO 9001 requirements, good enough training to assure a consistent understanding of the requirements’ intent.

The challenge is that professionals in the ISO 9000 business don’t seem to consistently understand or appreciate the fundamental importance of the process approach and its implications for QMS implementation and assessment.  So even between two ISO 9000 professionals discussing ISO 9001-certified QMSs, unknown to both, they might be talking about completely different things.  One might be talking about systems of ill-conceived documents, while the other might be talking about an actual systems of processes outputting product. (Only the latter is really talking about QMS) Continue reading →