What should be the Drivers for ISO 9000 / ISO 14000?

A Cyberfriend wrote to me : "I was reading a book on ISO 9000 and ISO 14000. The author was talking about the different drivers behind the two standards, one being mainly customer and market and the other being mainly the legal compliance. What is your view? ">

The above, to me, only represents one perspective i.e. ISO 9000 for customer and market and ISO 14000 for legal compliance. It is a conventional and very narrow perspective and create much confusion, complication and problems to the overall organisation system. I will try to explain as follow:

An organisation is an entity which has a system of operation. The system has certain characteristics that produce an effect or outcome.

With a simple model, we have ~~~~~~~ System -> Effect / Outcome ~~~~~~~~~

Typical management thinking takes the "Effect / outcome" as the purpose of the entity. And the purpose is, generally "satisfying customer requirement" and "compliance with legislation".

The above appears to be logical thinking but has much un-intended consequences generated over time, when management paradigm takes the above stated purposes as the primary focus or fixation. This leads to following organisational behaviour / mindset :

• "Because of customer requirement, we much do these"
• "Due to coming audit from legislation enforcement representatives, these agenda must be quickly implemented."
• "I don't think whether we should do any improvement to this little subsystem, after all the end product quality won't be affected, and customer won't complain"
• "It is a grey area. After all other industries also discharge as much such pollutants, and we notice the lenient legislation authority auditors interpretation with no corrective action necessary ..."

But any operating system has many interacting components (both human and technology to be managed). The interconnectedness and inter-relationship and interdependency of each and every recognisable or un-realised system components generate a variety of effect / outcome, not just "satisfying customer requirement" and "compliance with legislation". Likewise external changing environments can have an impact on any part of the operating system components.

Examples of effect / outcome of an operating system :

• Business product, or services.
• By-product : pollution, waste, discharge
• Appropriate or inappropriate relationship with stakeholders : suppliers, sub-contractors, related business sectors, community etc.
• Paperwork or bureaucracy
• Joy or stress in work experienced by organisation personnel
• Learning or un-learning discipline of individuals or organisation
• Health & Safety of personnel and community
• Happiness or total frustration of organisation personnel
• etc.

Example of External changing environments:

• Global economy, Borderless society
• Market forces, competition
• Environmental forces
• Cumulative effect of other operating systems or industries (e.g. Asian Haze pollution problem as a result of several contributing factors (outcome of man-made systems)
• Fast changing technology
• Changing Government or International policies (trading or others)
• etc.

Hence any operating system without a balanced, cohesive, harmonious interaction and inter-play of the above outcome forces, a destruction of the entity can be eminent.

When an organisation takes a skewed emphasis of ISO 9000 / ISO 14000 as merely "satisfying customer requirement" and "compliance with legislation", with so much management resources and energy, the resulting operating system is certainly distorted and inbalanced.

If organisation argues that there are other management system in place to take care of other aspects besides "satisfying customer requirement" and "compliance with legislation", a real, yet not so obvious, disaster is really in the making. This is because ISO 9000/ ISO 14000, (though by themselves are not the most brilliant standards) does contain management principles that cover, to a large extend, characteristics of an entity system. With separate management system to address other aspects can only create confusion, overlapp, gap, inconsistency and constant contradiction faced by personnel in the organisation. This is the typically described management syndrome : fragmentation, compartmentalisation, box thinking, dis-connects, lack of integration, alignment and lack of constancy of purpose or shared vision. (It is also unfortunate that presently ISO 9000 / ISO 14000 are separated documents each having slightly different emphasis but with similar management principles stated.)

To view organisation as an organic entity that has strong characteristics : e.g. to be adaptable, flexible, natural co-existence with changing environment, a comparison can be made as follow:

Treating children (similar to organisation entity) subjected to education system (similar to ISO 9000 / ISO 14000 system), what should be the drivers? Should the drivers be "getting a recognised certificate / degree in compliance with legal educational institution" and "getting a highly pay job or lucrative business)? As parents, we all know that it is only partially true, as there are many other aspects that cannot escape our attention. How do we view organisation drivers now? Should ISO 9000/ISO 14000 drivers be confined to "satisfying customer requirement" and "compliance with legislation" only.

What is your view now?

End.