Financial fear

In business and in life, if your are not afraid or at least uncomfortable, then you aren’t doing either justice.  I very recently had to confront a number of business fears as I head towards another three years of guessing, I mean business planning.  Am I using my time, resources, money to the best of their advantage?  I am living my dream?  Mostly I am and the future looks pretty good.  But could it be great?  Could it be fantastic?  Yep, I believe it can and as from today, I know it will.

The one really big down side of this strategy, is that I am going to have to come to terms with some ugly parts of my business and some very ugly parts of me.  A bit of tough love so to speak.  Making decisions from a position of strength, a position of knowledge, a position of fact.  Gulp.  It is time to know when and where my money comes from and goes to and to stop relying on the stupid amounts of gross earnings to get me over the lack of financial foresight.  Ladies and gentlemen, the tide has turned.  Time for interstellar outcomes.  Thanks Sue.

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Records management – part 2

The standard…. “4.2.4 Records are established and maintained to provide evidence of conformity to requirements and of the effective operation of the quality management system.  Records remain legible, readily identifiable and retrievable.  A documented procedure has been established to define the controls needed for the identification, storage, protection, retrieval, retention time and disposition of records.”

So the first thing you must know for a quality management system is that you must have a documented procedure for this element.  Full stop.  If you don’t have one or at least have the above requirements addressed in a merged procedure’ then you are non compliant.  So the procedure must address each of these; identification, storage, protection, retrieval, retention time and disposition of records.  Notice there is no prescription behind these requirements.  That is up to you.  You can address the requirements in each process or procedure or you can develop a matrix or table and describe these controls.  There is no right or wrong way in managing records.

The only real tricky component here is the statement concerning “Records remain legible, readily identifiable and retrievable.”  This may require some training, some discipline, some practice.  Just remember, that ‘I can’t find them’ is no defence in either quality management systems or tax audits.  So a few dummy runs on retrieval and readability is a great course of action especially if you are relying n computer data.  Now where does that 5¼” floppy disk get inserted into my server?  Hmmmmm.

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Try stuff

In business there are so many pros and cons with being an early adopter, a late adopter, a do nothing type of business.  And so without extolling the virtues of each, just let me say… try stuff and try stuff well.  There is an old and I say very wise business credo that says if you are not moving forward, then in fact you are going backwards.  This is because the rest of the world and in particular your competition, is moving forward, doing it differently, keeping up with trends, protocols, best practice.

But change for change sake is a drain on resources, time and energy.  So you will need to either be very astute and only pick the changes, the stuff that will benefit you ooorrrr, have a change model / protocol in place that will enable to try any or all things new things.

The key to this is a structured, multi phased go / no go set of scenarios linked closely to a resource pool so that thoughtful, meaningful progress can be made.  Not the least being the very first set of questions.  Is this stuff in line with your vision, mission, goals?  Is it core business?  Do we want it as core business?  Answer no to any of these and then you hold the new stuff until you can answer yes to at least one of those three questions.  Of course, this may mean reviewing your vision and core but that is just another change, with another review.

So try stuff or at least review stuff as much as you can and don’t do or don’t try stuff without a structured approach.

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Precertification Audit

So what is a precertification review / audit?  Didn’t I just do a document review?  Perhaps you did.  But as usual, the document review and precertification review are two different phases in the certification process.  It is just that some certification bodies(CB) conduct them separately, some conduct them concurrently, some even ask the client what they would like to do.  It makes no difference just as long as your know the rules and expectations of your chosen CB.

So a fortnight ago we touched on document reviews and once you have successfully met your CB’s document review requirements they then turn their attention to precertification.  Dependent on what they found or what they were shown during the document review, and in particular records generated by the system, they will deem the timing of the precertification review. 

The timing is based on two main factors; 1) enough evidence (records) to enable a judgement on effective implementation and 2) sufficient time between precertification and the proposed certification review / audit.
Some of the above factors include; at least 3 months of operational records in sales, purchasing, manufacturing, inventory management, at least two management reviews, a substantial if not all internal audits completed (very much CB dependent), at least 2 full cycle corrective action plans, competency / resourcing records and sufficient document, data and record control.

Should any nonconformances be raised during the document or precertification reviews, don’t expect to have your certification review / audit within 3 months.  If any other classification of finding is raised, you will need to demonstrate the lead times needed to correct or modify them before a CB will allow the planning of the certification review / audit.  Just remember, just because you have a time line within a project plan, doesn’t always mean you can keep it if it doesn’t match the CB requirements.  And of course, please remember that some CBs won’t even allow any forward planning of certification  dates without the first two reviews having even taken place.

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Split your time?

Are you a small business?  A service provider?  Are you the visionary, the rainmaker, the doer?  Most of us are.  Some of the best advice I ever got when I started up my business over 19 years ago was ‘to succeed in business, especially as a consultancy, you have to spend a third of your time planning, a third of your time selling and a third of your time on doing’ (thanks Vic).  If you don’t, you will go broke and your business will fail.  Did you get that message.  Let me repeat it.  If you don’t, you will go broke and your business will fail.

So you can do this in a few ways and do it that best serves your time management and your business.  My favoured way is to do each every day in small manageable bits.  They don’t have to get equal time every time but on average over the course of a week, they should.  Perhaps the planning phase could do with a little less face to face time, but my normal planning reviews and activities normally generate a raft of selling and doing activities which I attribute to planning thus giving you the balance.  But don’t get too hung up on the splits, just make sure you do.

However, I have added a final dimension, the fourth quadrant / quotient of your time.  Down time, fun time, me time.  Call it what you want but get it and give it at least an equal proportion of your time split.  If you get the other three right, you might be able to have those other three added up to equal the fourth.  And isn’t that why we run our own businesses?  Really?  You bet it is.  Only 3 plus months to my next holiday.

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Records management – part 1

Not so complex a subject but one that is critical to any organisation.  In particular is the duration in years that you must retain records to demonstrate conformance to a set of criteria, standard, statute or law.  There are some amazing time lines for some very different types of operations.  Here is a sneak peak and some of the legal requirements for the retention of records.  Quality management systems = 3 years, tax records = mostly 5 years, personnel records = term of employment plus 5~10 years, environmental and remediation records = 30 years, and some OHS requirements have no statute of limitations, therefore some records are to be kept indefinitely (and how long is that??, buggered if I know!).

So to get on the path of righteous and legally sound records management, the first thing we should start with is a quick definition.  Here is mine.  A record is a single source of or a collection of data that demonstrates conformance to, nonconformance to and or knowledge of a defined criteria.  It is a start.  And as for the difference between a form and a record, let’s just say a form is the defined criteria, whilst the data ‘written’ on to the form is the record.

Next blog we will look at the requirements of the standard.

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Client ratings

In a recent blog I extolled the virtues of selling to the converted.  Identification of the converted is simple.  Your ‘converted’ clients (and this is the last time I will reference them as such) are your ‘a’ and ‘b’ clients.  And how do you determine their ranking?  Well you rate them.

Rating clients is a simple exercise of both objective and subjective pros and cons, weighted scores and inputs from all of my stakeholders.  Put these criteria into a matrix crunch the numbers.

Do not over complicate the matrix.  A simple list of clients on the left side and a list of desired attributes across the top.  Then simply tick or cross against each and total the ticks.  Simple.  Then ask your employees and subcontractors to do the same.

Aggregate the scores and split into four quadrants based on the total spread assigning a rank of a, b, c or d.  You may choose to weight certain attributes if desired.

Some of the attributes that get my vote include; great workplaces, great payers, proactive, geographically convenient, low risk, quality.com.au referrers, understand quality management systems, don’t miss deadlines, and so on.

But the act of rating does nothing for you unless you act on them.  This means sacking your d’s, making c’s b’s or sack them, nurture your b’s and hopefully move them to a’s and celebrate with you’re a’s and give them unparallelled attention.  They will notice and they will reward you even further.

Do this exercise once every two years (or more frequently if there is churn in your client list) and plan your marketing / loyalty programs around those who deserve the attention.

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Certification document reviews

This is normally the first stage of the certification process, well second if you count your application.  It can be conducted on site or off site, you get to choose and very often it will be conducted simultaneously with a stage 1 or precertification audit to determine the readiness of a quality management system for the certification audit.  Confused?  Well of course you should, this is after all the dark art of certification.  Sorry, no more cynical talk.  The confusion comes with the lack of uniformity when describing the various stages of the certification process.  But enough of this rant as well.  I will explain the precertification audit in the next few blogs.

The document review is a very simple exercise since the publication of the 2008 standard.  Do the six mandatory documented procedures exist?  Do they meet the requirements of the standard?  Is there a quality policy?  Is there a quality manual or at least a description of the scope and content of the structural elements of the quality management system and last but not least, are there any supporting documentation, procedures, forms, instructions, etc that has been deemed appropriate by the organisation to demonstrate how the quality management system should function.

A document review is a very objective review of the requirements of the standard.  Normally there is no resultant report other than to highlight if any documentation is missing or does not address the requirements of the standard.  Just be aware that all certification / registration bodies conduct these reviews and audits differently, report differently and may or may not allow the review to be separated from the precertification.  This is no big issue, just be aware.  Some certifiers have proformas to complete, one even has a 20 page mandatory document review questionnaire without which they won’t even plan a precertification review.  Once you can show / demonstrate the structure and content, the next step is the precertification review, but that is another blog.

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