Have you ever noticed someone struggling with a problem because he didn’t know the “trick” to solving it? Have you ever wrestled with a problem, only to discover that it actually wasn’t a problem; you were simply approaching it improperly? In these cases, the way forward is usually apparent after stepping back and looking at the situation from a different perspective, or learning the trick.
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Sometimes, folks trying to solve a problem become so ensconced in their pursuit that they don’t step back to find the easy solution. Ingrained in their current way of thinking, the problem becomes viewed as being unsolvable, one that will always create undesirable consequences that can at best be mitigated. It becomes a Gordian Knot.
What’s a Gordian Knot?
According to legend, Alexander the Great was confronted with a challenge that had thwarted all who encountered it. The story says that an ox cart was tied to a post with an elaborate, intricate knot. Nobody could untie the knot to liberate the cart. Alexander, however, walked right up to it and solved the problem.
By one account, when he couldn’t find either of the two ends of the cord, he simply drew his sword and cut it to create the two ends he needed to untangle the knot. In another version, he simply pulled the knot out of the pin attaching it to the post to expose the two ends of the cord.
Although there are varying accounts as to how Alexander the Great solved this problem, all agree that he solved it immediately and with ease—by looking at the problem from a perspective that hadn’t occurred to anyone else.
So, a Gordian Knot is metaphor conveying a seemingly unsolvable problem that is easily solved by fresh perspective (out-of-the-box thinking) or by discovering the trick.
The Gordian Knot of ISO 9001
In many circles, ISO 9001 has garnered a less-than-stellar reputation. Many are dissatisfied with their experience in using the standard. They hired well-paid consultants and bought high-priced books to help them enjoy good results with ISO 9001, but like so many others, the high expectations of ISO 9001 adding value to the organization were not realized. The result: disappointment.
Alexander the Great’s experience with the knot, however, demonstrates that a change in perspective may be the ticket to improving your experience with ISO 9001. Instead of looking at it like a set of requirements prescriptively dictating how you must manage quality—as many in the ISO 9001 business like to cast it—think of ISO 9001 as being something of an international Angie’s List.
To appear on this international Angie’s List, an organization needs to demonstrate that it knows what it’s doing. Within its scope of supply, a listed organization is verified to have the appropriate infrastructure, personnel, and systems in place to deliver what it promises. Once the organization has proven its abilities, its name and scope of supply appear on the list. As the global marketplace continues to open new doors of opportunity, ISO 9001 registration provides a mechanism by which an organization can select a good supplier without having to visit that supplier halfway across the world, the country, or the region.
To be consistent in assessing whether organizations have functional systems in place to back up their promises, a set of criteria was developed. These criteria weren’t developed to tell anyone how to manage quality, but to sort out the ones who do from those that don’t. After all, what good would the list be if anyone could get on it?
So, the criteria were intended to distinguish between those with functional systems in place to satisfy customers from those that do not.
Untangling the knot
The first step in untangling the ISO 9001 knot is recognizing that rather than prescribing how to manage quality, the standard provides a consistent set of criteria against which any organization’s current quality management system can be assessed. An organization already providing quality products or services will naturally comply with most of the standard’s requirements.
So rather than focusing on requirements, focus on what you do while recognizing how it complies with the standard. Focusing on your own processes is what the standard requires. By focusing simply on conformity, a system becomes dysfunctional.
The way to untangle the ISO 9001 knot is to make quality management real rather than just a set of documents intended to “get certified.” Avoid the unnecessary administrative, training, and assessment costs associated with poorly conceived, prewritten, and redundant systems that will never help you effectively or efficiently manage quality. Develop documentation tailored to what you already do every day. That provides you with a means of process control and a foundation for process improvement. Tailored documentation is easily understood by personnel—as opposed to being easily understood by auditors.
This is called the process approach. The process approach is the trick to easily solving what has become the ISO 9001 Gordian Knot for many organizations. Without it, folks will continue to struggle with a costly, seemingly impossible problem that costs time, money, and energy. Apply the process approach, cut the Gordian Knot, and ISO 9001 problems quickly become non-problems.
The idea is to define your current processes so you can see how they operate as a system and document them accordingly. Then apply plan-do-check-act to the processes and the system to improve the system through time. If you do that, ISO 9001 registration is a snap.
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