Ask 10 experts about how to give feedback and you will get 10 different answers, simply because everyone is different. Giving feedback always seems to be a very tricky thing to get right. How often you do it, how you do it, where you do it and who you give the feedback to are all parts of the puzzle. Then factor in yourself, are you a conflict avoi...

Organisations struggle a bit in understanding what the context of the organisation is and why it matters. Think about it like this, how can you build a system to manage your organisational health and safety systems if you don't understand what the various pieces of the puzzle are? The aim of the context of the organisation, which is clause 4 within...

It seems every time you go the library, the bookshop or browse your favourite audiobook store there is another book on leadership (plus of course an untold number of blogs!). Each of these books and blogs promise a whole new spin on what you need to do to be a good or a great leader. Which approach should you take, which new theory or guru is the r...

The other week I was trying to arrange a catch up with our local Institute of Directors branch to talk about opportunities to do presentations at their meetings about ISO management systems and the benefit of ISO systems within organisations. With the aim of helping directors understand their part of the ISO environment. The response wasn't what I ...

February 2024 saw the release of the first amendment for ISO9001:2015 for Quality Management Systems. ISO releases amendments to standards when they want to add things to the standard that have already been agreed on, but they don't want to completely review the entire standard.  It's called the Climate Change Actions Amendment. What's been am...

When we talk with clients about achieving ISO14001 for Environmental Management Systems (EMS) the thing that seems to concern them most is getting to grips with two crucial elements: Aspects and Impacts. What are they, how do they interact with each other, and what are you supposed to do with that information. The good news is that these things are...

I overheard a conversation the other week at a between a couple of people who were talking about lean. Naturally, my ears pricked up and I just had to eavesdrop a little bit. They were making a list of their 'lean projects' they had completed already, which was quite a list. They were then going to set their sights on their next 'lean project'...

When we first started helping organisations implement ISO45001:2018 for Occupational Health & Safety Management Systems we quickly realised that organisations were struggling to understand exactly what this standard was about. They were all focused on the day-to-day health & safety processes, accident/incident reporting, risk or in some cas...

The other day I saw a LinkedIn post on leadership, it was another of those “I'll just stick this image up and see what happens” posts, hoping that it would get a reaction and go 'viral', you have all seen them. It had an image saying, "if you want to make everyone happy, don't be a leader. Sell ice cream". The quote has been attributed to many peop...

When you go see a movie or start binge watching your new favorite show you don't jump in a third of the way through because you know that the early stuff is just pointless, it doesn't add anything or skip the first 3 or 4 chapters of your book because, well the interesting stuff is always in the middle. That 1st part of any story is always the crit...