I received a phone call yesterday from a concerned client. They have an ISO 9001 (Quality Management System) external audit coming up.
“What happens if we get a non-conformance? Do we lose our certificate?” they anxiously asked.
“No” I casually replied.
“Phew!”
The two camps
Yes, these guys are relatively new to ISO 9001. Yes, I’ve been dropped into a the deep end enough times to know that a few non-conformances aren’t the end of the world. Even major non-conformances.
Obviously, I’d rather not have to deal with non-conformances but it is interesting the main responses I see businesses have to them.
The first camp: the non-conformance is stupid, let’s ignore it as best we can and do the least amount of work to close out the paperwork.
The second camp: let’s take this on the chin, let’s be grown up and find the learning in all this and become better as a result.
What camp are you in?
I remember being in a meeting with a different business, where an auditor was complained about. “They’re too hard on us, can’t we get an easier auditor?”
We debated the question. Is that what we wanted?
Or, did we want to embrace the bits of the audit that were a real assessment of where we were.
Thankfully, common sense prevailed and they embraced the learning points. There were some points that were picky, but most of it made sense.
Stop wrestling
So, next time you feel like grumbling about your non-conformances, catch yourself. Don’t wrestle with your feelings on the matter, you know what you need to do.
Decide if there is any learning that you can take away, and improvements that will make a difference.
Your systems and processes will improve and your results will improve also.
