Building a Results-based Management System
- by Nigel George. First published: 18th February 2009
If your management system is not results-based – if it does not identify the processes necessary for delivering on your businesses primary reason for being – then it is not worth the paper it is printed on.
Key Points
- A result is anything that contributes to your primary objective.
- Results-based management systems concentrate on what contributes to you objectives and ignores what is just window dressing.
Step 1. Knowing What a Result is
While this article assumes you are using ISO 9001 Quality and ISO 14001 Environmental Management as a base for your management system, the principles of building a results focused set of management policies and procedures apply, regardless of the underlying framework.
The foundation of a results-based management system is understanding what a 'result’ is. This is the point where most businesses come unstuck.
Achieving certification is not a result.
No more than getting an accounting degree is a result (the accounting job you get afterwards is the result).
All businesses have a primary objective. For profit-making ventures it is to deliver products/services that meet customers needs and doing it in such a way that they make a profit. Non-profit organisations may have a completely different objective, but the point is every business has a reason for being.
A result is anything, any outcome or deliverable that contributes or meets your businesses primary objective.
All the rest is window dressing.
Step 2. Focus on Results
This is where all the work is. While it is easy for me to summarise this step in a paragraph or two, it is going to take months of hard work on your part – especially if your culture is entrenched.
I can however recommend a good consultant who can give you a hand ;).
Now you and your people have to pull apart every process and every procedure and drill down into what contributes to your primary objective and what is window dressing. It is critical at this stage that you also identify who is responsible for what and formalise it – everyone must know where they fit into the grand scheme of things.
Flowcharts are great tools to use at this stage. They are easy to throw up on a whiteboard and play with, or put in a wordprocessor document and email around and everyone understands them.
Once you have a clear understanding of what contributes to your primary objective, put it all back together as one, consistent set of documents. How you do this is up to you. They can be flowcharts, manuals, procedures, work instruction, work method statement etc. etc. etc. The document format is immaterial – it just has to work for you. Forget all the motherhood statements and long, drawn out procedures – you know they’re useless and so do your people and your auditor.
Step 3. Check your system against the standards
(Those who do not intend to certify to any standards can jump to step 4.)
Notice this is last, not first.
The standards are non-prescriptive. There are some “must-do’s”, but, assuming you are integrating Quality and Environmental, this boils down to:
- Meet your customer requirements.
- Meet your legal obligations.
- Control your processes.
- Minimise your environmental impact.
Even when the standard requires a procedure, there is no specification as to the format – so a flowchart on the wall is acceptable – in 14001 there isn’t even a requirement that most procedures be documented – just evident.
By far the most important and useful tool for you and your auditor(s) is going to be a cross reference chart. Simply list all of the clauses of the standards in a table and put the name of the procedure(s), or a reference to your internal process or document(s) that meets the requirement of that clause.
That’s it.
Don’t need a manual. Don’t need umpteen procedures. Just make it clear how your system meets the standard. Your auditor will tell you if you aren’t quite there – but generally you will already be 90% of the way to being compliant at this stage.
Step 4. Don’t stop!
No business operates in a vacuum. Your markets are changing all the time and you need to adapt. A significant number of businesses stop at Step 3 and any further attempts to maintain the system as a live, evolving set of tools are tokenistic at best. The standards call it 'continual improvement’ – but this is often incorrectly interpreted as meaning you have to change things all the time.
Continual improvement is about intent, not outcomes. The idea is to create learning organisations. You can’t learn all the time, neither can you improve all the time, but if you have the system that supports it, learning and incremental improvement becomes a natural part of the process.
This last step is actually more important that the other three. You must close the loop. Feedback mechanisms need to be in place right throughout the system to ensure that when a better way of doing something comes along, or alternatively, market changes render the old way ineffective, your system adapts naturally without a sudden blaze of fires that need to be put out.
Taking Action
No shortcuts on this one – Steps 1 to 4 above. Not an easy task, but one that is worth it.
