On a conference call this morning.  A great way to end the week, feeling really positive.

Bet there's some investigations been undertaken following Madonna's fall off the stage at last night's Brit Awards.   She's lucky she could get up and carry on the show.

My daughter made me chuckle this morning when she saw the footage quipping 'ah the fallen Madonna with the big boobies' which was of course a recurrent line in 'Allo Allo'

I've been working on the development of an audit plan which really hangs together for auditing integrated management systems and it's made me realise just how much easier this is all going to be when the 3 standards (Quality, Safety and Environment) are all written to the Annex SL format, and all follow the same structure and clauses align.  Anyway that is some way off and what we have now is a document which can be used to ensure that all the elements of the 3 standards can be meaningfully audited together.  A nice project to have completed, with lots of learning and thought on the way.

Working on a really great project at the moment stripping down an out of date and unyielding QMS to make it fit for purpose.  I keep looking at the page count and smiling as the crap gets binned and replaced with stuff that makes sense!  Great fun!!

Very funny to hear the BBC refer to York Minster as York Cathedral yesterday!

A special day today as we deploy another Director into the market place to drive forward business improvement and development within the SME sector.  Great news for the business, and for the businesses who will benefit from his expertise.  

I just love The Fixer with Alex Polizzi, it always brings out some gems for me to use on training courses and last night's episode was no different.  Web design was touched upon and the confused and amateurish version which went before was transformed by a new sleek monochrome 'with highlights' web site.  The creative company who put it together certainly knew what they were doing and it has made us revisit our site to see if we feel it is still as we want it to be.  Have you looked at your site recently?  Why not get someone else to look at it and critique it for you?  A bit of objective feedback might help you refocus, or confirm that what you have is good to go.

All too often I see management systems which started off life with some colour and vibrancy but which have, with the passage of time, become old, dusty and lost all that glorious hue which made them come alive when they were first drawn up.  It's like looking at a rainbow in full splendour and then looking again later to find it's gone to a  sepia faded image and lost all it's impact.

I'm currently doing some work which will see a management system which has become overly long in the tooth revamped and revitalised.  I am drawing on my paint box of tools to bring it back to life, to re-invigorate it, to make it 'full colour' once again.  Have a think about your management system - is it a full colour rainbow, or has it started to fade to (a very topical) fifty shades of grey, or has it gone past that and become a fading sepia image?  The only way to interest people in the system is to make it right for them, get your paintbox out and start bringing your systems back to life!

I am doing some 3rd party certification work today and have been reviewing a suite of documents which purport to provide a robust and dynamic QMS ready for 3rd party assessment and certification.  

I noticed that each page was 'licensed' and went on to investigate the company who provided the system for the client to complete.  I now understand why the documentation is at it is, which is a long way short of what I'd expect if a decent consultant had helped the business development their system.  I shall now have to type up my notes and in due course explain to the client that there are some significant gaps in their management system.   

Thankfully we have some time before their stage 2, but I do wonder just how much help they will get from the company who sold them the system.  It is so sad to see companies being hoodwinked into  buying packages which are 'off the shelf' but which fall so far short of the mark.  

Interesting post on the BSI website re the transition to the new standard, aiming to debunk some myths.  Talk to us if you want to find out more about transition and how to make it work for you!