Sunday, 26 March 2000
Supplementary Issue – ISO Busting
From time to time we come across topics that deserve the full four page, 2,000-word treatment in their own right.
ISO 9000, and the year 2000 revision, is such a topic.
Most readers will know that there's a very large world-wide industry based on the ISO 9000 standards. The quality literature is standards-dominated. ISO certification is an essential pre-qualification for much of the contract business carried on around the world – from service provision to raw materials extraction. It's not something you can avoid, and it has the look and feel, the solidity, of foundation best practice.
“ISO 9000 is an internationally recognised standard - analogous to a warrant of fitness - applied to an organisation's procedures and systems,” your editor wrote in a masters-level research paper in the mid 90s.
“In the past it has been manufacturers, especially those selling in international markets, who have sought ISO certification. Their suppliers soon followed, notably in the raw materials, transportation and distribution industries. More recently, a third wave of paper based and white collar service industries such as legal firms and insurance companies have been seeking certification… a fourth wave, including government departments, state agencies, and publicly-funded organisations who increasingly enter private and contestable markets, have also sought to standardise the quality of their products and processes.” For the full paper, go to www.baldrigeplus.com/exhibit.htm
'But ISO has got very little to do with 'quality,'' a small band of atheists kept saying. 'It's about compliance, about doing things right, not about doing the right thing. You could certify concrete life jackets if they were always exactly the same …'
Leading the charge against the standard has been British ISO-buster John Seddon, who argued that the standard was causing widespread damage, and that the world needed to be rescued from its insidious effects.
The ISO bandwagon has rolled on, blithely unaware of the white ants chewing at its foundations. Or has it? The first thoroughgoing revision, ISO 9000:2000, is on the way (it's been on the way since the mid 90s). The work of two international ballots, five years of work, and countless industry specialists, the new standard is built around eight quality management principles. If you're familiar with 'Baldrige,' in any of its many guises, you'll recognise the language: customer focus, leadership, involvement of people, a focus on processes, system approach to management, continuous improvement, fact-based management and supplier relationships.
So it's moving towards 'Baldrige.' Does that reassure the sceptics? Well no. At least, not John Seddon.
In “ISO 9000: 2000, the standard digs its own grave.” Seddon writes “This revision is a step too far, a step that will lead to the demise of ISO 9000, for the revision is both confused and confusing. The irony is this is a fault of the process – something quality people ought to know something about.
So what are Seddon's criticisms?
First, he hates the revision process. The industry's 'draft for public consultation' is no such thing, Seddon claims. It's an insider's document, immune to those who oppose the ISO approach, intended only to reflect the views of “people who have a pecuniary interest in maintaining ISO 9000 as a requirement for doing business.”
Second, he's convinced the review process is confused, and confusing, by design. It seeks a consensus on suggested changes, but only in terms of what currently exists, and “without any objective evidence about what works, the exercise descends into what can be agreed amongst interested but disparate parties [and] the consequence is confusion..”
Third, he says there's no objectivity about 'what works.' The draft says "Leading and operating an organisation successfully requires managing in a systematic and visible manner". Where is the evidence for this assertion, Seddon asks? In his own research on the impact of ISO 9000 on performance, he found two effects: “Firstly it caused organisations to do things that were bad for business and secondly it stopped organisations seeing and acting on things that would make them better.”
So what does 'work'? Seddon offers two sources: Warwick Business School research into Small and Medium sized businesses (SMEs) and Japanese manufacturing experience.
According to the Warwick research “there are two ways of getting a boat swiftly down river. You can work on getting the crew to work better together, or you can get the boat into a faster current” and let the water do the work. The latter strategy, the research shows, is the secret of business success.
Successful companies don't worry about ISO 9000, Seddon says. They do two things: (1) “Identify rapidly growing market niches and jump in to exploit them – niche opportunities are thrown up by change; technological, social or legislative. Pre-cooked and pre-packaged food, customised holidays, newly-privatised services, and specialised services – 'spectacles in an hour' for example. (2) “listen very hard to their customers. From the customers' point of view, the service or product solves a problem, fills a need or does something of value. Knowing what that is, is critical to staying ahead; ensuring that future product development puts the customers problems at the forefront.”
Where's ISO 9000? Irrelevant to the first, may be some use for the second.
And the Japanese experience? Take the Toyota production system, which is “vastly superior to other manufacturing systems in terms of cost and quality” (there's a very good HBR article on this subject which I can't find), is based on systems principles, as are the production methods of Mitsubishi. “So we might ask,” says Seddon, “how well the draft of ISO 9000 represents and encourages systems thinking and, in my view, the answer is not at all well … [it] does talk about the need for the organisation to be managed as a system, but the principles and practices [in the draft] fit more comfortably with what might be called the traditional mass production or command and control perspective.”
Fourth, Seddon says, there's confusion about quality management principles and practice. Sure, the draft describes eight quality management principles which “at first reading, appear to provide some hope.” Dashed, he says, because “a systems interpretation of these principles is not what informs the draft documents. In many respects, the draft lacks integrity. For example, quality management is talked of as though it is one of a number of management disciplines. Systems thinking, however, is at the heart of quality management and it represents a different and better way of managing work. It is not additional to, it is better than. Systems thinking is a better way to make the work work.
Fifth, there's confusion about process identification and management. As a 'systems' thinker Seddon regards “Treating organisational activity “as a 'process' worthy of managing is misleading and unhelpful,” and in that context the draft's four process questions are a mixture of good and bad:
Q. Are the processes identified and established? is “good, but there is little guidance on the best way to identify a process, something users of the [Baldrige] model have also had great trouble with.”
Q. Are the processes effective in producing the required results? is “good, in fact of greatest importance; but the guidance on measures is unhelpful and misleading.”
Q. Are the processes appropriately described in procedures? “…opens the question as to what is appropriate – comments within the draft … acknowledge the historical problems of overdoing procedures but leave me with no confidence that organisations will not make the same mistake again.”
Q. Are these procedures implemented and maintained as documented? “ focus on conformance rather than performance,” he says, and this he fundamentally disagrees with, because “Conformity … can be the undermining of improvement.”
“Of course inspection of peoples' work with respect to conformance to procedures was and is the life-blood of the ISO 9000 community. This bias is clear in the draft's description of the value of documentation. It says: "Documentation is valuable for…. Achieving product/service quality and quality improvement; ensuring repeatable processes; providing appropriate training and evaluating the effectiveness of a system."
“The last I fundamentally disagree with and the first three leave me saying 'it all depends'. The draft provides no guidance on when these are true and when they might lead to unnecessary and counter-productive activity. The real purpose of documentation has not changed,” says the ever cynical Seddon, “it is to enable the assessor to do his job.”
Finally, there's confusion about measurement. The draft states "The organisation shall define, plan and implement measurement, monitoring, analysis and improvement processes to ensure that the quality management system, processes and products and/or services conform to requirements.”
Measurement for conformance is not the same as measurement for learning and improvement, Seddon says. 'Conformance' is 'go/no-go' thinking, whereas improvement measures are concerned with capability and variation.
“With respect to variation, the draft says "The organisation shall identify and use appropriate statistical tools" but gives no guidance on how and where to apply such tools … the draft emphasises measures of compliance and the value of measures to auditors; once again illustrating the standard's origins. Reading through the various examples of measures … most managers are likely to feel overwhelmed. Worse, few managers will be able to distinguish the chaff from the wheat – many of the measures used in examples are not good system measures and could lead to sub-optimisation of performance.”
In summary, John Seddon says, ISO 9000:2000 will fail because:
1. The philosophy has remained the same. There's some systems thinking, but it doesn't go far enough. Systems thinking has different underlying principles and these help managers change and improve organisations through identifying leverage, not managing procedures. In a systems approach to management, statistical techniques are essential, not 'desirable'.
2. The draft lacks integrity, it is contradictory, confusing and, worst of all, very much more demanding. It is unlikely that the auditing community will be competent to work with it.
3. There is no guidance on implementation. While ISO 9004 attempts to guide, the overwhelming amount as well as its inherent contradictions and confusions will hinder rather than help.
4. ISO 9000 remains rooted in conformance and audit thinking. Although it makes weak attempts, it has yet to make the leap to improvement versus purpose (systems) thinking.
5. Many managers may take the opportunity to abandon ISO altogether, Sedon says, in favour of the real thing – either the European (or their own national) version of Baldrige, or in the rest of the world, Baldrige itself.
· For more by John Seddon, go to http://www.vanguardconsult.co.uk.
· For an 'industry' view, look at recent copies of Quality Progress (on-line at www.asq.org), or any of the other quality magazines.
· Go to the home of ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation, Geneva), on-line at [search].