Who Has the Louder Voice? Actions or Words?

Looking around the abundant content relating to the various accreditations available to organisations that suggest quality, ethics and standards, I can’t help reflect on that often used phrase ‘actions speak louder than words’.

Attaining accreditation to something like ISO9001, ISO22222 or the more recently published BS8577 can be onerous, expensive and frustrating yet once accreditation is achieved does it actually deliver the benefits it should? In truth, the answer is ‘unlikely’!

I’ve seen how some organisations will gain accreditation to then forget the procedures they have so meticulously documented for the assessors scrutiny, consigning the procedure manual to a rarely visited corner of a filing cupboard to collect dust, ‘until the next time’.

Nobody worries or even thinks about those beautifully crafted process flows that describe how things get done, or don’t as the case may well be. No, what happens the moment the assessor has left the building is, business as usual. So what’s the point?

In many cases the point is ‘a box ticking exercise’. We are ISO blah blah so we must be better! Well, actually, no, that doesn’t work unless the requirements to achieve accreditation are actually put into practice instead of just documented and forgotten. So this begs the question as to why such procedures, once documented, are not actually adopted and put into practice.

The answer is quite simple, it’s just too difficult. The process flows say things are done in a certain way, forms always get completed and a record is maintained of everything that is done, and so it goes on. Get the point? It looks like it’s making life more, not less, difficult to do the job. And, sadly, that is the reality of the situation in many accredited organisations, I know, I once worked for one.

It easy to fall back on what we have always done if the better way is more difficult.

The outcome is, therefore, expense, effort and frustration for a certificate when it should actually be for a better quality product, more ethical behaviours and a higher standard of service resulting in a more secure and compliant business with growing profits and lower risk.

To really get the benefits from our investment in attaining accreditation we need to find a way of making our words, or our documented business processes in this case, into actions. Bring the documented procedures to life and let them work for us.

Then the actions really will be louder than the words.