Every once in a while, when I’m doing an audit someone will ask me—in a whiney voice—about some ISO 9001 requirement. The whine sounds something like, “Do we really have to ________?” Fill in the blank with any of a number of “shalls” from the standard. They know they have to, but they’re hoping that I’ll give them some easy out so they can ignore the requirement or get by paying it minimal lip service.

The question ticks me off, and I bite my tongue because I like most of my clients, and I know they’re struggling to do the right thing. Also, like the vast majority of people, I need to work for a living.

Nevertheless, sometimes I really want to say, “No, you don’t have to do anything. You can choose to have a crummy, ineffective, minimally compliant system that creates no value and is a bloody waste of everyone’s time.” I don’t because I know that their question isn’t posed out of miserliness or indolence, but out of genuine confusion and frustration. They can’t figure out why some of this stuff is supposed to matter. Besides, good managers should be able to justify expenditures—even those originating from quality management systems (QMS) standards.

The fact is we haven’t demonstrated the value. Somewhere along the line we’ve failed to make the case. We’ve failed to show the return on investment.

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