7.4 Communication
In the immortal words of both Strother Martin and Paul Newman in the movie “Cool Hand Luke”, “What we have here is a failure to communicate!”.
Communication is perhaps the absolute bedrock of every organization. Poor communication leads to chaos, poor performance, poor morale and other bad things. Good communication can foster a sense of community, teamwork and a clear sense of purpose and direction. A whole bunch of just plain old communication, measured only by quantity, is something else altogether.
There are myriad ways to communicate – directly by speaking, through written correspondence, through graphics/photos/videos and also in more subtle ways like “by example”. We’ve all been told, “do as I say, not as I do”. Hmmm, I guess that’s the gist of communication in a nutshell.
We all understand the importance of good communication. Most of us continue to work on it. Few of us every really master the art. But, because it is universally recognized as important, ISO9001 has taken it on as a requirement. What is an organization expected to do? The standard reads like this:
“The organization shall determine the internal and external communications relevant to the quality management system including:
a) on what it will communicate;
b) when to communicate;
c) with whom to communicate;
d) how to communicate.”
Now, I being the curmudgeon that I am take issue with the validity of this requirement as actually being auditable, but be that as it may, let’s just have a look at the intent of the requirements.
We must decide what, when, with whom and how we will communicate both internally and externally. This is expected to be a deliberate decision we make and stick to long term. How many companies have actually distilled their approach to communication to this fine a point? I know it makes my head hurt to try to think about. Isn’t that, after all, the problem? That we typically do not have such an approach? That much communication is an afterthought or is done as a correction because rumors and misinformation have circulated in absence of well thought communication to keep our organization informed?
The standard does help by keeping the scope at “relevant to the quality management system”. So, what does this mean? I guess it means that if we are to be compliant as an organization, we must all understand our part of the quality management and others’ parts as well. And we must recognize what the quality system is, when to communicate about it, with whom, and we must have a plan for how we will communicate. That’s going to be a tough one for the One Man quality systems out there on the shoulders of the lone management representative. This communication requirement, however cheesy, is as simple as it comes. And something I think we can all continue to work on.
THIS WEEK’S HOMEWORK
What is the current state of your organization’s communication? Think about its strengths and weaknesses. How do those strengths and weaknesses apply to the quality system? Are a) through d) above addressed or thought of? What changes, if any, should be made to your quality system to improve communication?
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