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f you’ve been sweating what to get your quality colleagues this holiday season, you might want to pass up that tin of gooey chocolate in favor of a new international self-help standard.

Published on Nov. 1 by the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization (ISO)—the same people that gave us the popular ISO 9001 quality standard—ISO’s latest contribution to the quality movement comes in the form of an international how-to guide for achieving “sustained success” through established quality principles.

Many helpers

The timing couldn’t be better because the global economy is still somewhat less than robust—and frankly, everyone secretly yearns for a good self-help page turner around this time of year. This one stands out because it was written by experts from about 35 countries as opposed to a single author locked in a room with potato chips and diet cola.

Titled “Managing for the sustained success of an organization—The quality management approach,” ISO’s roughly 50-page document represents the collective wisdom of 40 experts from the United States, Canada, Mexico, France, United Kingdom, Germany, India, Sweden, and Japan, among other countries, according to Bob Alisic of the Netherlands, who led the five-year drafting effort.

Alisic likened his task to pushing a wheelbarrow of live frogs from one point to another without losing—or killing—a single squirming passenger.

“I declared myself a little bit crazy to accept this job,” jokes Alisic, who was given discretion in assembling the best possible team from ISO Technical Committee 176, which had already earned the distinction of drafting the best selling voluntary standard of all time—ISO 9001 for quality management systems.

In addition to the usual cast of experts nominated by national standards bodies, Alisic’s team included experts with top management experience.

Irony of success

Ironically, the new document was drafted as a replacement for the commercially unsuccessful ISO 9004 standard and even assumes its numerical designation. The new ISO 9004 will attempt to build upon the success of ISO 9001 to help certified and noncertified organizations alike in meeting customer, regulatory, and contractual requirements while achieving long-lasting success.

Elusive concept

In the final analysis, the concept of success proved as elusive to capture as the frogs, according to Alisic.

The drafting team considered the effects of shareholder value, satisfied customers, and relevant interested parties in arriving at a working definition.

Balance struck

“At the end, we said the only solution is to have balanced satisfaction—a balanced approach to get satisfaction among the relevant parties.”

Sustained success—or as I call it—sustainable success, has been defined as the “result of the ability of an organization to achieve and maintain its objectives in the long term.”

Certification unlikely

You are probably beginning to wonder if this document is going to result in another must-have certification for your business.

Based on the international climate at the moment, I don’t think so; although I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few isolated programs that try to capture the flavor of the document in certification programs. As was the case with previous editions of ISO 9004, the text of the new success-oriented document explicitly states that ISO 9004 is not intended for certification.

According to the introductory text, “The sustained success of an organization is achieved by its ability to meet the needs and expectation of its customers and other interested parties over the long term and in a balanced way. Sustained success can be achieved by the effective management of the organization through awareness of the organization’s environment by learning and by the appropriate application of improvements and or innovations.”

The new document retains and builds upon the self assessment tool embedded in previous editions of ISO 9004. Annex A is now comprised of two self assessment tools—a relatively general one intended to provide a quick snapshot for top managers and one intended to create a much more detailed reflection of each process taking place in an organization.

Section headings

The following section headings are included in the new ISO 9004:

• Chapter 4 — Managing for the sustained success of an organization.
• Chapter 5 — Strategy and policy.
• Chapter 6 — Resource management.
• Chapter 7 — Process management.
• Chapter 8 — Monitoring, measurement, analysis, and review.
• Chapter 9 — Improvement, innovation, and learning.
• Annex A — Self assessment of key elements; Correlation between key elements and maturity levels. Self assessment of the detailed elements of each clause.
• Annex B — Quality management principles.
• Annex C — Correspondence between ISO 9004:2009 and ISO 9001:2008.

Carnegie-launched phenomenon

Skeptical?

Consider that Dale Carnegie may have single-handedly launched the self-help phenomenon in 1936, when he published How to Win Friends and Influence People (Pocket, 1990). His book went on to sell more than 15 million copies.

It’s not yet clear if ISO’s new success standard will sell more than a few thousand copies aside from the ones that come bundled with ISO 9001.

There is one thing we can say with certainty: The new document definitely has fewer fat calories than the gooey chocolates you gave out last year and the year before.

So why not go for it? You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain except those pesky holiday pounds.