ISO45001:2018 Clause 4.3 is all about the scope of your Occupational Health & Safety Management System (OHSMS), so which parts of your organisation will be included within your system. Think about it a bit like drawing a box and putting all the parts of your organisation into it that you want to include - there may well be some parts you want t...

I'm going to open with a bit of an inflammatory statement and hope you don't close the page, are you ready…  You are doing risk management wrong, and your business is suffering because of it. For that matter I bet your whole ISO document structure is wrong! Now, while you calm down a bit here's a question, if I asked you how your risk manageme...

Clause 4.2 – Understanding the needs and expectations of interested parties - is an important one and sets up your system information going forward. The details of your interested parties can drive everything from improvement to guiding management of change. While Clause 4.1 Understanding the organisation and its context is technically first, 4.2 g...

 ISO 45001:2018 Clause 4.4 is an interesting one, it's classed as a 'general clause' as it's pretty all encompassing, it says The organisation shall establish, implement, maintain and continually improve an OH&S management system, including the processes needed and their interactions, in accordance with the requirements of this document IS...

Climate change is a hot topic everywhere these days and ISO is no exception.Its Climate Action Amendment has been added as a requirement in all management standards, regarding both risk assessment and stakeholder needs. This means it affects 9001, 14001, 45001, 27001, 22000 and 50001.Or in plain English, the standards for Quality, Environmental, He...

When we first started helping organisations implement ISO45001:2018 for Occupational Health & Safety Management Systems we quickly realised that organisations were struggling to understand exactly what this standard was about. They were all focused on the day-to-day health & safety processes, accident/incident reporting, risk or in some cas...

If you missed our webinar on how ro Muliply the power of yoru quality system with the amazing Tamela Serensits from Argolytics then you are in luck, we recorded it! The whole point of the webinar was to talk about how to drive business improvement and reduce costs by multiplying the power of your Quality systems. We wanted you to see how easy TREND...

We were really honoured to be invited onto MANGO's webinar series where we got to talk about one of our LEAN passions, 5s. If you want to get started in LEAN then 5s is the way to go and listening to our webinar should give you some great hints on where to start, what to do and what not to do. We hope you find it helpful.  D...

We were recently invited to take part in a webinar with the Craig from Mango to talk about continuous Improvement and how a little can go a long way. When it comes to Continuous Improvement there seems to be a belief that you have go large if you want to have any major impact on your organisation. You don't! In fact, more than that, you s...

Unfortunately, Most continuous improvement programs fail, either completely or they fail to live up tot eh hype and expectations that are set up front for them The reason for this is that they are focusing only on delivering the "big bang", they make a big song and dance about this new latest thing and hope that it'll work, like the noise of t...

Understanding exactly what you need to do in order to achieve ISO9001:2015 can be a bit of a challenge. Sometimes the language in the standard can be a little, well, unclear. Don't get me wrong the 2015 version of the ISO9001 standard is vastly improved over the previous versions of the standard but unless you are familiar with ISO standards a...

Food fraud has been around a long time and is generally considered as "intentionally causing a mismatch between product claims and product characteristics" (everyone has their own definition!). For FSSC certification, Clause 2.5.4 calls for a Food Fraud Mitigation assessment and plan on how to minimize the risks, for very valid reasons. Sellers try...

We've posted previously about the frustration of badly managed change in a business, but what makes a truly useful change management system? Small teams can manage change reasonably simply, but once you start growing into multiple departments with multiple staff, it can be very hard to always get those needed in a room together to hash out every ch...

We've all been told that checklists are the answer!... tick this and your quality will be great, but have you checked in with your team? Are they sick of ticking boxes? Are you really sure your quality checks achieve what you need them to? Maybe it's time to reinvent your quality control system and fix up your check process to make it mor...

When is Continuous Improvement not Continuous Improvement? It's not a dad joke, it's one of my favourite annoying questions I pose to clients when we are working through any form of LEAN or 6 Sigma programs.I'll wait a little while as people ponder the question... go on you as well… OK, so When is Continuous Improvement Not Continuous Improvement? ...

There are many myths in the world, ranging from Bigfoot to bumblebee's defying the laws of physics (they don't) and of course the Loch Ness Monster (who is just shy and wants to be left alone). It seems that myths are still very real in the world of work as well. Work-life balance is impossible, remote working is inefficient, workplace conflict can...

Ever wondered how you as food manufacturers or food retailers can ensure that every product you produce or sell is not only tasty, but also safe to eat? One of the key areas is supplier management. Let's have a nosy into what goes on to guarantee food safety for the consumer. 1. Choose Your Suppliers Wisely: It all starts with selecting suppliers y...

If you have read our blog for a while you will know that we hold the annual employee review with great distain, for many reasons it's in effective and does neither side of the equation any real benefit. When it comes time to sit down with the boss to do an employee review session what invariably happens is that, as an employee, you quickly dig out ...

Clause 4.1 of the ISO45001:2018 standard, Understanding the organisation and its context, can cause some trepidation, confusion, hand wringing and general bewilderment for people, I know when I first read it I thought WHAT THE!? but then I read it again (and again) and did some research and thought, actually I see what they are doing here, that's p...

There are so many area's as a leader that you need to focus your energy on from making sure your team are performing well, those improvement projects you need to do to get those business metrics heading in the right direction and of course not forgetting the monthly reports and bottom line results! The list feels never ending. What if there were a ...

There are as many ways to run a to do list as there are days in the month, probably more! The other day I was having a coaching session with a new leader in a business and they were sharing their to do list set by their boss with me. I found it quite an eye opener, there were a great many things, 10 in total with an A against them inferring these w...

It's easy to get caught up with what everyone else is doing, to try and guess what's in their heads or what their strategy is for the way forward. People and companies all over the world spend countless hours and bundles of money trying to figure out what the other guy is doing or going to do rather than focus on the important thing, what are they ...

"Now THAT's an hour of my life I won't get back!" ..it's a phrase I have heard a number of times leaving meetings, I'm willing to bet you have as well, in fact come on, let's admit it, it's a phrase we have all probably used. Meeting are generally those parts of the business that people hate and it doesn't seem to matter if you are an exec or anyon...

I've sat in a few, ok a lot of exec & operations meetings at companies as they discuss the various metrics that are being used to monitor the performance of the company and make some fairly major decisions. Each time I do I see largely the same thing, and it's not good. The range of metrics used in businesses always surprises me in the commonal...

Meetings are a complete waste of time!.. well if that's how you feel then you're probably doing them wrong! I know sounds strange when you go to so many meetings to hear that but yep you're doing them wrong and what's more, as a leadership team, there are only 4 types of meeting you need to be having, that's right, only 4 meetings but lik...

What are you trying to do?  For the last 3 times I've started to write a particular article and then stopped, restarted, then stopped again. The reason?.. it just doesn't look right, it's not how I had it in my head, it's not... perfect. It wasn't till I was out walking the dog that it hit me, I was stuck in one of those really dangerous spots...

Did you ever notice how what looked like impossible tasks or deadlines seem to just happen when there is that sense of crisis? "If we don't achieve X then we" loose the major customer or the company or whatever it is. People rally around, pull together and suddenly everyone is heading the same direction and you make the numbers or the deadline? It ...

The Thematic Goal as we discussed here, is your rallying cry to give your organisation the laser focus it needs to have on a specific topic. In a sense you create your own 'controlled' crisis without a crisis. Now that you have clarity about what is the most important thing your organisation needs to focus on, it's time to figure out the next stage...

The Thematic Goal process is, as we discussed here, a process for creating a rallying cry to give everyone focus on the single most important thing in your business, right now. It's executed by using Supporting Objectives with Lead measures that we discussed in our last post, here. Once you have your lead measures then, it's time to get into action...

If you want to change the culture in your organisation focus on the behaviours, no big shock really but what if I said there is a good chance that your own measures or business metrics are fighting against your efforts to grow your culture and improve behaviours?   Lets Look At An Example  We worked with a company who said that "Quality i...

For many people it's budget time again and I don't know about you but for me, doing the annual department budget was never my favourite task. My first budget was terrible, it was largely just given to me and not knowing much better I said sure I can do a 5% cut in costs! Having been through the loop a few times now I've learned the odd thing o...

We have all been there, we argue black & blue that it's round when someone else argues nope, it's a square, the weather is too hot or just right, you should set the machine like this or like that, the examples are endless.  I was talking about this top of viewpoints to a client last week and pulled out this image that I've used many times ...

The Daily Check in is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, its a check in session where daily schedules, activities and issue alerts are shared between the team so everyone starts on the same page each day. The meeting should last no more than 5 minutes, 10 minutes at the most! There is no agenda for this meeting and you sho...

I used to work for a boss who had an over riding rule, "The  answer is YES" no matter what, we answer yes then figure it out, then we do it. While from a marketing point of view this may well have been great, from a real world perspective it was terrible, let me explain. For a start there was an ever growing mountain of things to do, thin...

As part of a run down on the 4 Meeting structure which really comes out of Patrick Lencioni's book Death By Meeting (also referenced in his book The Advantage) last week we talked about the 5 minute meeting, this week it's the Weekly Tactical Meeting we're discussing. You'll remember from our summary (check here if you don't!) that this is the 45-9...

As part of the 4 Meetings process we talked about having a scoreboard set up for your 3 or 4 key metrics that you want to track for each quarter. There are a number of templates around that you can use, you can develop your own as well but we thought we would share one of ours. Overview We've structured the Scorecard to make it as simple as possibl...

We have talked a lot about the benefits of a thematic goal but did you know we created a template that you can download and get stuck into using right away? Here is the link to get your very own copy of it completely free Grab Your FREE Template For your FREE template of the Thematic Goal process just fill in the form and we will send you a co...

As part of our run down on the 4 Meeting structure which really comes out of Patrick Lencioni's book Death By Meeting (also referenced in his book The Advantage) last week we talked about the first two meeting types, the Daily Check In and the Weekly Tactical so lets talk about the Strategic Meeting and why it's critical. Strategic decisions a...

Becoming a Budget Ninja may not sound like something to aspire too but believe me, once you learn the ways of the budget Ninja you wont go back! Your busy getting prepared, you have studied with the grand master of the finance department and know what your challenges are. You've carefully read (and printed out our info-graphic) for 8 Tips...

We have all been to those off site 'strategic' meetings where you spend more time hiking through hills, playing golf, river rafting, falling off tables in the obligatory 'trust' exercises and, I'm sure, many more "Team Building" exercises I haven't even thought about. What a waste of precious time, don't get me wrong I'm not saying t...

You will have heard the saying - if a tree falls in the forest does it make a noise, well Productivity is kind of the same, Are you really productive if no one knows or rather how do you know you are productive if you are not actually measuring it? A question we always ask clients is how you view your business? Is it effective, ...

The Complete Process We love the Thematic Goal Process, we've talked about it often here and we've even designed some templates to help you make it work but we wondered what else can we do to help. The, it hit us, an E-Book.. something you can take away, print off, hand out to friends colleges so they can discover the process in their own...

On Wednesday morning my alarm went to remind me to get up to watch SpaceX's Falcon Heavy take off on it's test flight. Truth be told I didn't need the alarm, I was up already and excited, this was history in the making. Then, disappointment it was delayed by over an hour because the wind conditions weren't quite right. Finally the wind was good, th...

Every business has problems, it doesn't matter the size or complexity of the business issues come up, daily some large and some small. What defines great business and great business cultures is how they solve those problems both in terms of the solutions they come up with and the methods they use to do it. The size of the problem often dictate...

A lot of the time when you ask companies about their ISO9000 compliance they are ever so eager to show you their quality statistics, the Xbar charts and a multitude of other charts, talk about their outgoing and incoming quality checks and of course customer returns levels. All of which is great, but that's only a part of ISO9000 and some would arg...

It's been a busy time of late between some increased travel while working with some great clients in Auckland, plus touching base with some in Christchurch, working with some really interesting individuals as part of the LinkedIn Mentoring program, preparing for our workshop next week on Understanding & Improving The Customer Experience and of ...

When I talk with people about their quality system or ISO9000 the one bit they all tell me is that they have lots of Non Conformances getting captured (which is good) or that they have just had an audit and passed with no issues (which is not so good!). What I tend to pick up though is that Non Conformances are seen as a bad thing, someti...

In our previous post on Core Values, we outlined Permission to Play Values, those values that must be present in someone before you even let them in a organisation. There are some obvious ones here, Honesty and Integrity for example but there may be other ones that your organisation decide to add that are specific to your business or industry and t...

When you go see a movie you don't turn up a third of the way through because you know that part is pointless or skip the first 3 or 4 chapters of your book because, well the interesting stuff is always in the middle. That 1st part is the critical opening act, it's where the whole story, the basis for everything is set up, it's critical to the end o...

So you have done the hard work, you have figured out what your real Core values are, you are clear on your permission to play values and you also have a couple of aspirational values that you are going to build a plan to embed these into your organisation. You are all set, let's get the posters made & framed! Frame them, Don't Frame them.. Not ...