My books arrive from Amazon.  When I get a new business book, I like to read it in its entirety and check out everything in it and then distill it down to the bits that interest me.  I think this comes from dealing with software.  I used to read the entire manual or help system for each bit of software so I knew everything that it was (supposedly) able to do even if I didn’t know exactly how to make it do it.  These two books  I have bought from Amazon are going to get the same treatment.

After half an hour looking at Ray Tricker’s book I am agog.  His book is making the subject matter more confusing rather than simplifying it.  I find chapter titles such as “Interoperability of Quality Management Systems” dinstinclty demotivating. 

I read on.  The book goes though the standard clause by clause and talks in general terms about what most companies should do but it is not very precise about how they should do it.

I know this book is a best seller on Amazon but to me the language is far too close to that of the standard itself.  For example it explains that “Quality Assurance personnel are members of the organisation judged competent to carry out quality assurance duties”.

I know that a sentence like this as a stand alone makes sense but what it tells you is self evident.  If three of four sentences of this type are packed into the same paragraph then I find myself going nowhere.  Tell me something I don’t know or something that isn’t obvious.  Please distill it down.  Don’t make it so complex and wordy that I can’t make head or tail of it.  It’s just exhausting.

It’s beginning to dawn on me that maybe that is what this industry is about.  The consultants, auditors and others keep things deliberately complicated so they can bamboozle customers and charge lots of money for providing some very simple solutions - like Peter of FXXP’s forms and procedures.  (Peter himself  though is not a bamboozler.)

It reminds me of many people’s attitudes to accountants.  People who don’t understand accounts are so deferential to accountants.  As soon as an accountant mentions a word like ‘debit’ or ‘credit’ , his client often switches off.  The client can’t tell when the account is talking a load of baloney and when he’s not.  The accountant sits there uses lots of long words, is able to cover up bits he doesn’t know and then sends a nice fat invoice afterwards.  In my role as management consultant, I have often helped clients in these kind of situations. 

Ray Tricker provides something that I am really interested in getting hold of – an example Quality Management Manual for an SME.   However, Ray Tricker’s version is a whopping  160 sides long.  Sovereign Certifcation’s was more like 20 sides.  How can I possibly wade through this lot? 

Right now I am very frustrated and disappointed.  This book is a best seller – probably because it’s the only one on the subject.  Maybe its useful to some management academics really into the theory and MBAs etc.  For me it’s just compounded the situation.  Its  saving grace is the 5 page appendix listing the minimum documents required by standard.  This is useful – at this stage worth the £40 I paid for the book. 

It also says within the book that purchasers of it can buy word versions of some of the documentation featured within a book on a CD.  I visit the website (http://www.herne.org.uk/).  The amateurish design of the site does not instill confidence.

I send an email enquiring about the CD.

Based on notes from my diary and other records from May 2008.

I remember my session with Peter of FXXP Associates from October 2007 and how simple his BS 7858 and ISO 9001 processes were. 

I dig out the folder Peter gave me containing the copies of ISO 9001 and have a look at it.  Its 23 sides long and reads like an Act of Parliament.  I have no idea how to interpret most of the clauses and no clue as to which ones apply to a secure data destruction company.

To make matters worse, I cannot figure out from the wording which elements are mandatory and which are optional.  I refer back to Peter’s processes and forms and can see how they relate to certain clauses of the ISO but that still leaves 80% of the text of the Standard unexplained.

This is like needing a lawyer to interpret a law – as the words can have different meanings and if you don’t have experience of interpreting the clauses then its very hard.

I know I am up against a huge challenge now.  I can hardly make head or tail of the ISO 9001 Standard which is supposedly the base or easiest standard, and I haven’t even got copies of ISO 27001 and ISO 14001 yet. 

Its time to launch a large salvo of enquiries and research to enable me to move forward and get answers to three key questions:

1. What are the minimum compulsory requirements in each standard?
2. How are they practically integrated into the procedures and processes of a business?
3. How do the different standards fit together?

Based on diary entires from April 2008.

I am curious that about retaining a management consultant – or at least someone doing something close to that.  I have not often been on the receiving end of one but have spent the last few years dispensing advice as just that – a Management Consultant.

Peter arrives with a big plastic folder for me containing the full text of ISOs 9001 and BS 7858.  This is very naughty – the origin/ copyright info is blacked out in the margin.  It’s a good start for me though – approximately £180 worth of documents.

I assume that we are going to start going through the standards, read each clause and learn what it means and how it applies to Data Eliminate.  Peter has no such plan.  He asks me a number of questions – he wants to see copies of customer orders and enquiries.  I have none.    Eventually he says that doesn’t matter and that we can draft up the necessary documentation. 

What astounds me about what Peter did (and charged me £500 for) was its simplicity. That is not a criticism of Peter.  He did a full day’s work, was obliging and he knew his subject area – but perhaps in a way which was slightly blinkered.  He offers value for money and is an obliging guy.  But compared to the type of “management consultancy” I am used to providing – it was so, so simple and based on the reproduction of standard material as opposed to creative thinking.

He had some set of form templates (Word documents) on his laptop – some relating to ISO 9001 and some relating to BS 7858.  Some of these are forms you fill in and others are processes.  It becomes apparent as Peter goes through these that he is giving a template for the paperwork you need to present to an ISO Auditor to prove you comply.

I am still expecting to go through the ISO requirements and work out how I need to configure Data Eliminate’s accounts, CRM, ERP and customer service workflows and processes so I can accommodate the needs of ISOs.  It seems its almost the case that if you have a few manual forms you comply.

BS7858 is about vetting your staff’s employment history before they start work.  For this you need a documented process which starts something like this

1. Requirement to Vet security personnel in accordance with BS 7858

2. All applicants must complete an application form and be interviewed

3. Collate completed application forms

4. Set up personnel fie

 And so on…..

It is completely common sensical.

Another document is a Quote Register done in Excel.  This features fields which would be collected automatically by the most basic quickbooks or Sage software package.

ISO 9001 requires you measure the satisfaction of some (but not all) your customers?  To prove this you have to ask them the questions in writing “Were you satisfied with our service” and thats about it.

As the day progresses, Peter spends increasingly more time working on his own without my input – he is amending more and more templates.  He is heading them with “Data Eliminate Ltd” and making minor amendments.  I keep expecting in depth discussions about processes etc and how they’ll fit in with ERP systems but this doesn’t happen.  I take the decision to let Peter provide as many as these forms as possible to maximise my vale for money by the time the day is out.

I am given a useful sheet on what do next for BS7858 which included the name of a Credit Agency and am advised to register under the Data Protection Act.

By the end of the day I am satisfied that I can move on to look at other aspects of the business idea like the practicalities and machinery for crushing hard drives.  What I don’t have is an understanding of the correlation or interpretation of the long legal like documents Peter gave me at the start of the meeting (the Standards themselves) with the simple forms he gave me at the end.

Based on an account recorded in my diary from October 2007.