I was sitting at work in the room of the software developers, when I heard that the Ministry of Finance, where I worked, are about to embark on implementing a new system; ISO Quality Management System. “What on earth is that?”, I thought. I immediately got busy doing some online research. Within a couple of hours, I became familiar with the concepts, within a couple of days I was able to contribute in a discussion about ISO and offer my insights. I continued my practice getting heavily involved in any initiative to use ISO, soon I became the expert and was offered to audit 7 departments for ISO compliance, train other staff and guide discussions. Proudly, I felt that quickly landed me in a 5-day intensive course to be a Lead Internal Auditor. This is what really builds up your confidence in you; research, practice and teach.
A major charity heard of those achievements and decided to hire me to be the project manager for a brand-new ISO implementation. We set up a small team, trained all the 80+ staff scattered over 9 departments and began the documentation and auditing process. Finally, we succeeded in qualifying the multi-million-dollar charity in becoming officially recognised as fully ISO compliant and won the certification. At the awards ceremony, the awarding German certification authority stated “When we were invited to audit this charity, we thought we would come across a simple quality system, however, what we found is a solid comprehensive system that is well implemented all with internal efforts and no outside consultancy” That was a badge of honour on our chests.
During the stage where we educated all departments about the nature and benefits of ISO compliance, we had a discussion with the Finance department of the charity. We had discovered that they had 39 application forms, some looked similar. A handful of 5 forms attracted my attention. During the meeting, this was the discussion.
Me: I see you have many forms.
Finance: Yes, each form is designed for a specific purpose.
Me: Would it help you if we reduced the number of these forms.
Finance: It is not possible; we need them all.
Me: What if we can show you that you will not lose any value by reducing them?
Finance: We doubt you could, but go ahead.
Me: Look at form A and Form B, they look similar apart from these two fields, correct?
Finance: Yes, they do, but they are for different purposes.
Me: Here is my suggested form amalgamating Forms A and B with no loss of data, how is that?
Finance: I suppose we can merge them.
Me: What about Form C, we can merge that too
I continue the cycle until we agreed that 5 forms can be reduced to 1 with no loss. I am process oriented and can quickly spot similarities and differences in procedures, the question is, how do you pick such duplication of work within your business? In my view, duplication of efforts kills your time and wastes money.
ISO stands for the International Organization for Standardization that is dedicated to producing standards for many industries. ISO 9001:2015 which is known as a Quality Management System that can apply to any type of organisation from factories, firms, charities, schools to shops. This is because it is designed to be general in nature that help maintain procedures, processes, forms, decisions, change and staff development. Among the many benefits that you expect to reap are
- Reducing paperwork via using only approved processes
- Focusing the business work on what adds value
- Removing redundant work and freeing human resources
- Basing business decisions upon facts and figures
- Standardising all business processes
- Managing all change and development
- Showing the world, you care about quality in your organisation
I would urge you to find out more about ISO Quality Management System and reach out to myself to start the conversation, get in touch here https://mohsalih.com/contact/.
