Leadership and the ISO Management System Standards

The King Report (currently King IV) on corporate governance, is widely accepted as the leading guidance standard on how companies should be lead, and how they should be conducting their business. How does this tie in with the requirements of the ISO management system standards? We will try to establish links to the three basic standards, ISO 9001:2015 (Quality), ISO 14001:2015 (Environmental) and ISO 45001: 2018 (Health and Safety). This is not to say that there is no link to other ISO management system standards, but let’s keep it simple. I have paraphrased and, in some cases, used the wording of King IV for the sake of simplicity. KING IV focuses on making organizations sustainable in the long term. If someone wants to invest money in an organization, and, for many, if they are going to support an organization, they want to know that it is going to be sustainable over the long term, the next 20 to 30 years, and even longer, while it is conducting its business in a responsible manne...

 Can a company ensure that they are able to keep their best employees? This is a question that many leaders in organizations struggle with. If we select people with potential and we develop them (= spend money on their development!), they may leave us and go and work for somebody else. If we do not develop them (= spend money on their development), we will not have the best people that we can. Certainly a very difficult decision, and one that has resulted in some companies spending a lot of money on the development of employees, only to loose them when they go and work for somebody else. But why would they leave their jobs? Is it more money at another company? Is it because they are just not committed to the company? Or is it something else? In 2013 I happened to listen to a presentation by Patrick Lencioni at the Global Leadership Summit. The title was intriguing: “How to loose your best people”. Patrick is the founder of The Table Group, a consulting company on leadership in ...

  No, it is not a person who died, far from it! It is about my ability to be a great leader in my company dying. We often see it. We see leaders who are enthusiastic, energetic and successful gradually becoming disillusioned, loosing their energy and focus, and start fading, becoming just another manager, and not a very good one at that. What causes this to happen? Dr Henry Cloud, clinical psychologist, leadership consultant and author, came up with a name for the problem: “The death spiral of a leader”. The starting point of the death spiral is found in the culture of the company, the way employees are working, etc. People on the team have a negative attitude. There is silo working outside the team. Employees and managers are focused on their own agenda and not the team goals. There is division amongst team members. Some employees and managers are always playing the victim, blaming others for their short-comings. But here is the important question a leader has to ask him- or he...

  How do we measure the performance of our companies? The answer depends on what we regard as important in terms of company performance. For some it may be all about the financial performance of the company, for others the level of customer satisfaction achieved, etc. But in essence, if we look at performance in terms of ISO 9001:2015 (quality management system), it is about the ability of the company to remain in business from a financial point of view. Companies are normally focused on making a profit, for the benefit of the owners and for the employees. To be able to decide on what we need to measure, we must first understand what we want to achieve as a company. This brings is to something that is mentioned several times in ISO 9001:2015, strategic direction. It gives us an indication of what we regard as important, derived from risks and opportunities discovered during the context assessment for the company. We need to first look at a few terms that is important in this re...