Through visualising and analysing your company’s processes, you can identify areas for improvement, streamline operations, and ultimately enhance customer satisfaction. In this blog post, we’ll dive into the basics of process mapping in the context of ISO 9001.

What Is Process Mapping in ISO 9001?

Process Mapping in ISO 9001 involves documenting and understanding all the key processes within your business. It entails creating a “high-level” overview of your operations processes, documenting all processes step-by-step, and creating detailed process maps. By understanding the full scope of your business processes, your organisation can create standardised workflows, identify decision points, and continuously improve its quality management system.

Keys Processes to Consider in Business Process Mapping

You should take process mapping seriously because it has much to do with customer satisfaction and improved efficiency. Some of the key areas to consider in business process mapping include the following:

• Operations processes – These are the everyday tasks like production, shipping, and receiving.
• Support processes – These are activities necessary for operations that facilitate efficient strategic decision-making.
• Decision points – These are points in the process where decisions need to be made and documented, with input from stakeholders such as customers, suppliers, and staff members.Business knowledge management involves Identifying any knowledge source that could help optimise workflows and improve the business’s overall success.
• Inspection and Test procedures – How test results are evaluated to ensure quality products or services are delivered to customers can be critical for customer satisfaction or regulatory compliance.
• High-level process designs – Developing detailed plans for high-level process designs such as enterprise architecture, product design, or financial accounting can help guide other design decisions throughout the organisation and create better efficiencies over time.
• Documenting Processes – Recording detailed descriptions of each activity in your workflows with diagrams and flowcharts to ensure continuity between teams or departments over time is essential for maintaining quality standards laid out by ISO 9000/9001 certification requirements.

Building a detailed process map is key to demonstrating how inputs and outputs move through an organisation.

How to Create a Detailed Process Map for ISO 9000

Here are the steps to follow when creating a business process map:

• Identify all the inputs and outputs associated with each business process your company performs.
• Mark each of these steps on a process chart and draw arrows between them to identify the flow of activities.
• Include decision points in this map, which will help you further analyse how your workflows are functioning.
• Add all relevant details to your process, including timelines and tools needed.
• Review and adjust as needed to incorporate feedback from stakeholders and make sure it aligns with ISO 9001 requirements.
• Once it meets all criteria, implement your process map within the quality management system.

How Best Practice Can Help

Process mapping is a great way to gain insight into your operations and processes, allowing you to improve efficiency while ensuring customer satisfaction continually. ISO 9001 certification is achievable for any business that documents processes and works towards continual improvement.
Our ISO 9001 certification services at Best Practice can help you better control processes and create detailed workflows for your business operations. Contact us today to learn more about how your business could benefit from ISO certification services.

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Most people are familiar with ISO 9001 and its functions, but ISO 9000 doesn’t receive as much attention. However, ISO 9000 can be incredibly beneficial to any business aiming to meet customer demands. Additionally, it can fulfil regulatory obligations and support continuous improvement. Every organisation should view these standards as a stepping stone or the foundation for a robust quality system.

The Distinction

The main difference between ISO 9000 and ISO 9001 is that ISO 9000 comprises a family or series of quality management standards, whereas ISO 9001 is an individual standard in the family. An essential thing to note is that within the ISO 9000 series of standards exists ISO 9000 as an individual standard, which outlines the vocabulary and fundamentals of QMS. In this post, we will expound more on the difference between the two.

ISO 9000

ISO 9000’s main goal is to clarify terms used throughout the other standards. It also incorporates the quality management principles that serve as the foundation for the entire family of standards. The standards are based on the following:

• Leadership- Organisations should establish direction and purpose to help employees achieve objectives.
• Customer focus- Organisations should focus on understanding, meeting, and exceeding customer needs and requirements.
• Process approach- To achieve the desired results, organisations should view activities as a process.
• People’s involvement- Everyone in the company should be involved in the activities of the business.
• System methodology to management- Companies should identify and understand processes for efficient and effective solutions.
• Factual decision-making approach- Organisations should make decisions after carefully analysing data.
• Continual Improvement- Organisations should strive to improve their systems and procedures.
• Valuable merchant relationships- More value is created when everyone in the organisation benefits.

ISO 9001

ISO 9001 is a specific standard within the ISO 9000 series. It outlines the requirements for quality management systems (QMS) that businesses must follow when supplying valuable products and services. The QMS outlined in ISO 9001 must be utilised by personnel in the business to maintain a focus on customers and their needs.

A gap analysis and internal audits are necessary to implement a quality management system. The primary objective of these activities is to identify the appropriate actions that need to be taken. The gap analysis involves evaluating the current QMS and comparing it to the new ISO 9001 system, which becomes the new quality management standard.

Completing a gap analysis allows owners and other personnel to identify the differences between their current QMS and the previous one, which enables them to move closer toward their continuous improvement goal. These assessments are typically conducted during the early stages of the ISO 9001 implementation process.

Any company that wishes to implement ISO 9001:2015 should conduct internal audits. This process helps evaluate the effectiveness of the new quality management system and assess whether the company is eligible for certification. This is because ISO 9001 was established to allow business owners to take steps to improve quality assurance by implementing ISO standards. For further opportunities to enhance quality beyond ISO 9001, ISO 9004 can be utilised. However, it’s important to note that only ISO 9001 has a certification body.

In Conclusion

The ISO 9000 family of standards is helpful for companies wishing to maintain a higher quality assurance level. For businesses looking to understand specific terminology and standards, ISO 9000 is an excellent resource. On the other hand, ISO 9001 is implemented to ensure that a company is customer-focused and continuously improving. By utilising these globally recognised standards, businesses can ensure that they meet the needs of all stakeholders.

Becoming certified is no small task. It requires training, documentation, and tracking your organisation’s Quality Management System (QMS) processes. Working with an accredited certification institution specialising in this process is advisable.

Are you looking to get ISO 9001 certification? Best Practice Certification is JAS-ANZ accredited certification body committed to making your ISO certification journey as smooth as possible. Contact us today to get started.

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But what is a procedure? How do you write a procedure that is consistent with ISO 9001 standards?

What Is a Procedure?

A procedure is a set of detailed instructions that outlines how a particular process should be performed to meet a specific standard’s requirements. Procedures must be followed to ensure the organisation consistently produces quality products and services.

Examples of procedures include steps to document processes, perform internal audits, or handle customer complaints.

How To Write An ISO 9001 Procedure

Determine The Purpose And Scope of The Procedure

The first step is to identify the area of your business that the procedure will cover and its purpose. You can do this by reviewing the applicable ISO 9001 requirements and the long-term objectives.

This review should consider the scope of the QMS and the applicable laws and regulations. It is also important to assess any potential risks associated with those activities. Additionally, considerations should be made for the resources available and other activities necessary to complete the procedure successfully.

Align To Business Process

Once you establish the purpose and scope of your procedure, it is time to align it to the business process. Take the time to understand the internal and external issues (business context) that will potentially affect the procedure as well as the needs of the stakeholders.

That way, you will be able to determine the risks and hazards associated with the process and find ways to mitigate them.

Gather Process Information

Your procedure will need a comprehensive document structure detailing all the process requirements. Collect all the necessary information, including resources, activities, input, output, and the individuals responsible for each activity. Methods that can be used to gather information may include flowcharts and the five Ws, which include five questions:

• Why is the procedure important?
• What are the materials?
• Who is involved?
• When do activities happen?
• Where do activities take place?

Develop A Document Structure For Procedures

The fourth step is to create a standard document structure that will also act as a procedure template. A document structure should incorporate all ISO 9001 requirements, such as ISO 9001:2015 clauses and other related standards. The document should include the following:

• Definitions
• Scope and purpose
• Responsibilities
• References
• Procedure
• Version History

Document The Procedure

Once you identify the purpose of the procedure, align it to the business process, gather information, and create a document structure, the next step is to write the procedure. We recommend hiring an expert, like Best Practice Biz, to help document each process.

Your written procedure shouldn’t be voluminous but detailed enough to incorporate all the necessary steps.

Monitor, Review, And Update The Procedure

The last step is to monitor and review the procedure occasionally to ensure it’s recent and relevant. Make the necessary adjustments or updates to the procedure and communicate them to stakeholders and other relevant parties.

Learn More About ISO 9001 Procedures With Best Practice Biz

At Best Practice Certification, we are ready to help create your ISO 9001 procedure so you can have an effective quality management system. Contact us to learn more about ISO certification services and procedures.

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The Principle of a Quality Management System

There are seven fundamental principles of a QMS:

1. Customer focus
2. Continuous improvement
3. Engaging people
4. Leadership
5. Process approach
6. Managing relationships
7. Making decisions based on evidence

ISO 9001: The Ten Clauses

Listed below are the ten ISO 9001 clauses and their action headings:

PLAN

ISO 9001’s first six clauses deal with initial planning and are under the planning phase. They include:

Clause 1: Scope

Clause 2: Normative approaches

Clause 3 Terms and definitions

Clause 4: Context of the organisation

Clause 5: Leadership

Clause 6: Planning

DO

In clauses seven and eight, companies are required to take action to ensure that they operate efficiently and produce high-quality products. In clause seven, you are required to monitor and measure your company infrastructure and resources. The eighth clause deals with the operational aspects of your business, such as designing and developing products and services and planning and controlling operations.

Clause 7: Support

Clause 8: Operation

CHECK

As part of clause nine, performance evaluation is addressed and includes measurement and evaluation of customer satisfaction. Clause 9.3 emphasises the need for an internal audit, and clause 9.4 calls for a frequent review of top management.

Clause 9: performance evaluation

ACT

In clause ten, the corrective actions necessary for continuous improvement are addressed.

Clause 10: Improvement

ISO 9001 Certification Documentation

The ISO 9001 certification process requires both mandatory and non-mandatory documents. Records are compulsory to demonstrate your company’s compliance with ISO 9000 standards and obtain certification. It is beneficial to submit procedure documents during the gap analysis stage, but it isn’t compulsory.

ISO 9001 2015 does not require the quality manual that ISO 9001 2008 requires. However, it is still valuable for your company as it serves as the foundation document for your QMS.

Records (Compulsory)

• Calibration records for monitoring and measuring equipment
• Training, qualifications, skills, and experience records
• Records of product/service requirements reviews
• Records of review of design and development outputs
• Development and design inputs records
• Output records for design and development
• Records of design and development changes
• Product and service characteristics
• Customer property records
• Change control records for production/service provision
• A record of conformity between the product/service and the acceptance criteria
• Nonconforming outputs records
• Program for internal audits
• Internal audit results
• Management review results
• Corrective action results

Procedures (Voluntary)

Procedures for:

• Establishing the context of the organisation and interested parties
• Addressing risks and opportunities
• Competence, training, and awareness
• Maintenance and measurement of equipment
• Documents and records control
• Sales
• Design and development
• Service provision and production
• Internal audit
• Management review

Process Mapping

Since ISO 9001 is process-based, an essential part of implementing ISO 9001 is understanding the processes. It’s not always straightforward to comprehend a text-based system, mainly if you use an integrated management system. Visual representations such as process maps can make it easier for you to follow processes and result in better QMS efficiency.

A process map displays the whole process from start to finish and entails the following:

• Inputs and outputs of the process
• Responsibility and activities
• Process loops, parallel processes, and pathways
• Decision points
• Metrics, objectives, targets, and critical measures
• Interactivity with other processes

Bottomline

It may seem daunting to attain ISO 9001 certification, but most companies already have the relevant procedures and records in place. By analysing gaps, a certification body can determine what you need to change or implement. Once that is done, creating an ISO 9001 quality management system becomes seamless.

Click Here for Your Free ISO Gap Analysis Checklist

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The latest version, revised in 2015, is much more flexible in terms of documentation requirements. Below, we’ll discuss the mandatory procedures for ISO 9001:2015, which your organisation must comply with to become certified. These procedures can be classified into two groups:

1. Mandatory documents cover quality policies or objectives you develop that can be modified later.
2. Mandatory records keep evidence of the results obtained. Records are not subject to revision since they are proof of a result or outcome of an activity.

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Mandatory Documents for ISO 9001:2015

Mandatory documents are written procedures that enable an organisation to gather, organise, and store important information for a smooth business assessment. This information should be as diverse and simplified as possible to allow for easy use by all departments and external parties. These documents include:

• Scope of Quality Management System (QMS)
• Quality objectives
• Quality policy
• Procedure for the management of outsourced processes

Mandatory Records for ISO 9001:2015

Mandatory records are used to monitor and assess administrative documents and processes that have been developed or received by a company. The procedure involves protection, storage, identification, retrieval, and retention.

Control records help determine the efficiency of a QMS and its functions. These records must be accessible and are usually subject to regular review and audit. These mandatory records include:

• Records for design and development of inputs
• Records for design and development outputs
• Records of monitoring and measuring equipment
• Staff competency records
• Records of design and development control
• Procedure for evaluation and selection of supplies
• Customer property records
• Control of nonconforming outputs
• Design and development changes records
• Internal audit results
• Release of products and services
• Monitoring and measuring outcomes
• Identification and traceability records
• Results of the management review records

Internal Audit Procedures

Internal audit procedures are used to ensure that your organisation meets the requirements of the ISO standard. It helps obtain evidence and evaluate your company objectively to determine the extent to which the QMS conforms to the requirements and guidelines of the standard.

ISO 9001 internal audits provide an opportunity to identify non-conformities and areas of improvement to verify the efficacy of the preventive and corrective actions taken. In addition, these audits can help ensure your organisation meets its internal objectives and customer requirements.

Control of Nonconforming Outputs

As part of complying with ISO 9001 requirements, all nonconforming outputs should be recognised and amended. Nonconformity generally occurs when outputs fail to meet the standard’s quality requirements. This problem can be controlled by identifying the defect, documenting it, and recommending proper action to amend it.

Prevention And Corrective Actions

Prevention actions are activities taken to reduce or eliminate the risk of non-conformity. It suggests the most appropriate actions for a specific business risk, reducing the chances of occurring. Corrective action, on the other hand, is the process of establishing a remedy to ensure that any identified hazards are addressed promptly and effectively.

Contact Best Practice Biz

These are some of the mandatory requirements you must observe to become ISO 9001 certified. At Best Practice Certification, we are equipped to help you get your ISO certification so you can conform to international standards. Get in touch with us today to get started.

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What Is ISO 9001?

ISO 9001 is an ISO standard that focuses on an organisation’s quality management systems. The most recent version of the standard is ISO 9001:2015. The certification is issued to an entire organisation.

The standard applies to businesses in all industries. The standard offers a systematic way of ensuring your organisation meets its quality objectives while allowing you to review and document processes, systems, and procedures related to product quality.
The first question most people ask is whether they can conduct the ISO quality audit internally. Although you can conduct an internal audit, you cannot use your internal ISO 9001 to obtain an ISO certification. Your ISO 9001 audit should be handled by an external certification body.

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The ISO 9001 Process

The process begins with an opening meeting where an auditor informs you about what to expect during the audit. They then perform an audit of procedures using an ISO 9001 audit checklist.

After the audit, a closing meeting is held to review the details of the audit report. This involves reviewing corrective action processes to help you achieve quality objectives and maintain or obtain an ISO 9001 certificate, depending on whether you were previously certified.

How to Prepare For ISO 9001 Audit

You can take several steps to prepare for the ISO 9001 audit process. Here are four tips we recommend:

• Conduct Internal Audits Regularly- Regular internal audits allow you to achieve corrective actions and continual improvement and will allow you to streamline your organisation’s quality management system as you prepare for ISO 9001 certification. The more thorough the audit is, the higher the chances of obtaining and maintaining your ISO 9001 certification. For this reason, it is essential to have an internal audit checklist.
• Review the Quality management system with your management team – Once everyone understands ISO 9001 requirements, they can implement corrective actions and ensure your organisation’s processes meet the requirements.
• Monitor Objectives – The external auditors will check whether you meet objectives and track your progress over time. Remember to adjust objectives depending on business demands. For instance, you can lower sales objectives to accommodate a changing economic environment.

Want to Understand and Meet ISO 9001 Requirements? Reach out to us Today!

Best Practice is a JAS-ANZ-accredited body dedicated to assisting you in understanding and meeting ISO requirements. We offer training, support, and consulting systems to ensure you obtain or maintain an ISO 9001 certification.

Do not hesitate. Take the first toward developing a robust quality management system and fill out our online contact form to discover more about our ISO training programs, ISO certifications, and other services.

Get Your Free ISO 9001 Gap Analysis Checklist

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What do the ISO standards require? What you are required to do as an internal auditor vary. But first, how do you conduct them? The key is to take a holistic approach to your business improvement strategies to get staff ‘buy-in’, improving the exponential engagement and involvement. By ensuring you conduct your internal audits this way you can ensure you get the most out of the audit process and create the best internal controls.

What the standards require:

The ISO standards for Quality Management Systems (ISO 9001:2015), Environmental Management Systems (ISO 14001:2015), Safety Management Systems (AS/NZS 4801:2001, OHSAS 18001:2007, ISO 45001) and Information Security Management Systems (ISO 27001:2013) all require internal audits to be planned and conducted. This means the audits have to be carried out at pre-determined intervals, and not “as required”. The more often internal audits are carried out, the more effective they should be and the easier they should be.

They also require internal auditors to be trained, and this training can be defined by your management system. One great method is the Best Practice Internal Auditor Training course, where we go through the ins and outs of internal audits and remaining unbiased.

The steps you are required to take:

As an internal auditor, you should ensure your processes say what you are really doing. Is your system compliant?

The next step is to determine whether this process is being carried out all of the time, in every scenario. If not, what are the instances the process has not been followed?

Now your process is being followed all of the time, determine if the process is efficient or whether it could be done in a better way. Efficiency is about achieving maximum productivity for the least possible cost.

Lastly, you need to remain unbiased in your observations of the processes and how they are being conducted. Your recommendations should be delivered with a positive spin – imagine a team session where the team work together to look for improvements, then develop a plan to work on the most important ideas identified.

For assistance with identifying areas of improvement, you can complete a self-evaluated Gap Analysis Checklist to highlight gaps within your Management System.

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I’m the CEO here at Best Practice, and I’ve been thinking back to when I started the business. I’m thinking about all the systems I’ve looked at, and I’ve talked about it with the team to come up with top tips and tricks for you to follow in terms of going through that process and understanding what it is that you need to do.

The first thing I’d recommend that you do is some reading: most importantly: grab a copy of ISO 9001:2015 from our Training Academy. So, step one is some reading. Now, dropping down, starting with an internal audit, or your own little gap analysis in terms of what you need to do to understand what’s the standard is – how does it apply and learn through the process. More importantly, what we’re looking for when implementing a system is a raft of evidence… so why not get started straight away.

Do not- and this is tip number one- do not go and write lots of policies, or get a whole bunch of templates. You’ll get too caught up in what you need to write down. So, tip number one: start with an internal audit. Now what you can do is you can jump on to the Best Practice Training Academy here and download the ISO 9001:2015 checklist. There’s a checklist for the standard and they’re easily accessible. That’s going to give you some things to focus on and make the priority.

The second thing to do is talk to your stakeholders. They might be the executive management of the business that ask you to look at ISO 9001:2015, they might be customers or they might be your regulators. Have a think about what their needs are. It’s important to start to convene your system and start to assemble your system from day one. Now, once again, I’m saying don’t go and write lots of documents. Start with this process the documents will come later. So, after you have conducted your internal audit, in the context of thinking about your stakeholders, I want you to think about the opportunity to conduct your very first management review. So that is step number two.

Now, out of that, we can start to think about risk-based thinking and ​we can do some analysis. So, how do you conduct a management review? Assembling the senior management or top management in your organization is important to talk them through your findings for your internal audit and start thinking about risk-based thinking and how you can mitigate or eliminate these risks. The management review is your record for your system implementation.

So, what other evidence do you need? You need your internal audit records – you can use our checklists from our website as the record. For the management review, setting meeting minutes would be your record there. For more information on what this looks like, watch the video at the top of this article.

Now, we’ve got another process that’s starting to occur here in terms of our risk-based thinking and what we want to start to identify over here is our controls. And you can start to look and identify those as part of your analysis, engaging with your stakeholders. So, your stakeholders will help you to specify what the controls are. The stakeholders could be staff, managers, anyone working in the organization, suppliers and contractors. You need to build out and manage those risks that you’ve identified. You might be thinking: “Wow, this isn’t looking like a quality management system – what’s the how-to?”. This is the ‘how-to’, because what we want to see is the management system. We want IT- we don’t want to see all these documents. We want to see that there’s a self-evaluation cycle in place, which is your internal audits and management review, and we want to see an improvement process in place. So, what we can start to do is capture improvements.

So, what do we do next? Well, there’s going to be a couple of things. This management review and internal audits start to establish our cycle of continual improvement. So, moving right along we can start to talk about our business plan. Now you might say: “Hey, I work for a massive organization. I’m not involved in the business plan”. Well, that’s not ultimately what we want to see. We want to see that the management system is tied into the business.

My suggestion here an improvement register, for example. So, we can talk about non-conformance, opportunities for improvement, corrective action, preventative action and all those sorts of things. Those improvements are going to feed back into the management review, and spilling out of that is controls. Controls include things like training. We can look at training to have people implemented controls. Policies, procedures, work instructions, guides, all those sorts of things, but try to minimize these as much as possible. I would suggest video guides as a fantastic way of creating controls. These are all different ways to have people manage the risks. So, it’s all about this risk management here in the context of management review.

Now, in the absence of a business plan you can use ISO 9001:2015 as the business plan, but what are we really focusing on here is what the objectives and targets are. Now, there are lots of videos here on YouTube and on Facebook and all that sort of stuff and what the reading about smart objectives and target.

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To successfully implement an ISO 9001 quality management system you need to incorporate a risk based thinking approach to developing your strategic plan in your organization. This can be incorporated with a SWOT analysis, your business plan, and in turn looking at the effectiveness of the controls.

For example: If something is always happening that’s negative, or there’s this customer complaint that always comes up- these are good indicators that the controls that you have in place are failing.

So how can you identify these risks?

Having a think about analysing, recording and reporting the indicators around common complaints, common issues, recalls, product faults, defects, service faults, service problems, people issues, customer issues, are all example of important things that you could record and report on and then ask yourself how can we improve customer satisfaction.

How could we minimize customer complaints? What could we do to improve the customers experience? What could we implement to improve the customers experience?

In turn, it’s important to keep a range of statistics to monitor and measure the effectiveness of the controls implemented. The most important part here is the implementation and execution, it’s implementing and executing the positive activities.

What are the preventative actions to manage the risks? The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that you have identified in your SWOT analysis and risk assessment as you’ve built out your business plan and your strategic plan.

Identifying risks and opportunities in your ISO 9001 quality management system should incorporate your SWOT analysis, your business plan, strategic plan and then the risk assessments you have undergone for those.

If you want to go more in depth into risk based thinking and you want to think more about what’s a SWOT analysis, what should be the strategic objectives of the organization, take a look at our ISO 9001 Essentials Course over in our online Training Academy, as well as our ISO 9001 Gap Analysis checklist.

Click Here for Your Free ISO Gap Analysis Checklist

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If you’re somebody that’s struggling with management review as part of the standard, understanding how that fits together as part of the cycle of continual improvement, we’re going to take you through our 3 tips for successful management reviews.

Our 3 tips and tricks’ that we’re going to go through are what we follow here at Best Practice. If you’re struggling with management review, if you’re feeling frustrated, if you’re feeling a bit fuzzy and unclear we’re going to demystify what that management review process is all about.

1. Effective Frequency of Review Process

Tip number 1: the management review processes and undertaking what the ISO standards refer to as management review is to considered the frequency and effective frequency.

Consider the effective frequency so you’ve really got to not be overwhelming people with too much stuff, you’ve got to get on top of your numbers in a frequency that’s short enough to enable you to do small things that still track and keep you on your journey to your goals.

The core objective of the management review is to put all the inputs together, which is how your performance is running, and how you’re tracking towards your goals. The most important part of management review is the outputs.

Management review is about readjusting resource management and resources are; time, money and people. Readjust those resources to keep making progress towards your goals.

Management review should look like executive managers, and its people with authority and autonomy to manage the performance of the business getting together on a quarterly basis with a set agenda. It also includes those people who are prepared, bring in their numbers, reports, performance and they bring in their proposals to adjust and track the performance going forward.

2. Preparation & Planning

Tip number 2 for management review is about preparation and preparation is about planning. What’s the plan? Think about who, what, when, where, and how, the why which you might think is missing, is all about your goals, your strategy.

Aiming for wicked management reviews or awesome management reviews is about planning; it’s about the participants as part of management review not just turning up for a meeting saying right what’s up. It’s about coming prepared with the plan, a set of actions to negotiate, an idea on how I’m going to run this play, how I’m going to do this thing and then consulting and negotiating with the other key players on the team to ensure there’s not going to be conflict.

Apart of that preparation is bringing in the numbers and knowing the numbers. Knowing the numbers, knowing the goal, knowing whether you’re on track or off track and then really unpacking before you get to that management review what your proposed course of action might be so that you can liaise with the other key players that you may need assistance from to actually get those results.

All the different key teams, depending on how your business is divided, have a small mini business plans that’s on for example 3 slides so they can present and initiate a discussion around what they’re proposing to do.

They will inform the teams about what they’re going to do to move forward and then solicit some assistance from those teams. Remember it’s about achieving the performance that they’re forecasting and ultimately achieve their goals individually and as as the business as a whole.

3. Leadership & Influence

Tip number three is all about leadership and influence. It’s developing the leadership skills that are required to lead that team and inspire that team towards the dream or the goal of the business.

Looking at influence skills, leadership skills, communication skills and this question that we use a lot here at Best Practice; “the solution lies in the mind with the problem”.

Think about how you can achieve great open questioning: ‘what are we going to do about that?’, ‘When are we going to do it?’, ‘How are we going to do it?’, ‘Who’s going to be involved?’, ‘What resources might we need?’, ‘What adjustments might we need to make to the business?’, ‘What changes might we need to make to the business?’, and ‘How will we roll those things out?’ Are all important questions to be asking.

With good preparation and some good open questions, you’re going to put the problem in the mind of your executives, the problems that exist maybe in other parts of the business, and start asking questions to extract and mine the solutions to get a successful result.

Often we do say that the solution lies in the room and it lies in the collective minds of the room. For executives out there, for business leaders out there and for key strong personalities in groups there’s a tip that I learnt a few years ago and that is to speak last.

Its about putting the question out there and speaking last so that you don’t bias the group with what you think the solution might be or even what you think the problem might be.

Just to quickly recap on what our three tips and tricks are for management reviews;

1. An effective frequency and the effective frequency we run is quarterly.
2. Proper prior preparation and planning.
3. Effective leadership and influence in the context of extracting value and a return on investment from your managers.

So what does that all look like?

What that looks like is regular management reviews, and I’d highly recommend quarterly, with your executive team and the people that have the power of autonomy to lead their parts of the business all coming together to come up with solutions that are going to be integrated, consulted and effective in achieving goals in the future.

Your executives are going to be planning for those meetings, they’ve done adequate preparation to enable them to have robust discussion about how the teams are going to work together to achieve the goals of the business.

You will have an MC , a leader, a convener or possibly an independent person facilitating those workshops, someone who’s got good influence skills, good leadership skills to keep the conversations on track and to be extracting the value from the participants.

You’re going to have a meeting that finishes on time, that’s well planned to a set agenda and you’re going to end up with adjustments to the business in terms of a plan and resourcing that can be executed on a to-do list.

This is how you will see the results start to change for the better in your monitoring and measurement and a business that is marked for improvement.

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