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 in 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 talking about lean. Naturally, my ears pricked up and I just hard 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' and how ...

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 bing 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 criti...

Here in sunny New Zealand, we are known for lots of things, beautiful landscapes, friendly people, the lord of the ring movies and of course the innovative spirit, that kiwi Number 8 wire approach, she'll be right. That innovative Number 8 wire approach I guess comes about because NZ is just so far away from most things, as a Scot, I also wonder ho...

People don't leave jobs they leave managers, it's a phrase you see across the internet and popping up on memes on social media and of course talks on youtube and TED. There are countless surveys out there that will tell you 57% of people or 78% of people or any number you, want leave a job because of their boss, and so it must be true, that's why p...

The amount of interest in ISO14001 and environmental certifications continues to grow all the time. In a wholly unscientific bit of analysis, we noticed that enquiries to us about helping companies either achieve certification for the 1st time or simplify how they manage their ISO14001 processes with Mango QHSE rose over 150% from 2022, that's pret...

An ISO standard for making Tea? Surely the world has just gone mad, bureaucracy is taking over, and it's just getting a little silly now, who needs a standard for making tea? Anyone can make tea; you bang on the kettle stick a tea bag in a cup and then pour in the hot water and then the milk… Well, hold on a minute, my gran would be incredulous wit...

When I hear about companies and their zero targets it makes me shudder, I feel sorry for the people involved in the organisation knowing that they can never succeed. It doesn't matter if you call it a target or a goal, zero means zero. According to the merriam-webster dictionary, Zero is "the absence of all magnitude and quantity", in other words i...

Productivity is a fickle thing, it can drive you to make some interesting and costly decisions in the name of getting more out of your process. Organisations the world over get sucked into the belief that to improve productivity, you have to open the wallet and spend the profits (or the overdraft) to become more productive. How much are you being b...

If you missed our webinar on how ro Muliply the power of yoru quality system with the amazing Tamela Serensits from Argolytics then you are in luck, we recorded it! The whole point of the webinar was to talk about how to drive business improvement and reduce costs by multiplying the power of your Quality systems. We wanted you to see how easy TREND...

Many organisations that decide to achieve ISO14001 for Environmental Management systems already have ISO9001:2015, which is great because the two systems are very closely aligned and follow the same Higher Level Structure, which creates a harmonised approach to your management systems. What this means then is that Clause 4 of ISO 14001 is going to ...