Fri 8th April 2016
Unaccustomed as I am to writing about my work, I'm pushing myself to get my message out there. My name is Christina and I'm a Quality Management Consultant but with a background in healthcare (a qualified nurse and midwife and sonographer) and so, a little unique
I've set up my own business so that I can focus on combining the things I love doing, namely helping make things better and helping people feel better. Quality management is such a weird topic. I never understood it when I was first introduced to the concept whilst working in a fertility unit. As part of my nursing role, I had been performing the documentation and the treatment outcome audits and enjoying getting all the records into order. Appraisal time came up and as there were no opportunities for promotion, they suggested I try out the quality assurance department and learn how to audit professionally. There I was introduced to this ISO 9001 thing and the world of "quality management systems". But it wasn't really until I got poached by a London company to set up their QMS that I really started to understand what it really was and that it was just a question of re-organising and re-naming aspects of a business and giving it a structure that would make the company run more efficiently and give more consistent service and products. Writing the company quality manual by basing it on the structure of the ISO 9001:2008 standard (as it was then) made me read the whole standard in a whole new way. Since then I've been trying to explain what it is I do. My children think I'm a doctor (!). I think my husband thinks I just write procedures and audit reports but even he doesn't really understand what it is that I'm on about and why I think it is such a crucial thing to have in place for any business.
I've come to the conclusion that although the international standard has enabled it to become standardised across the world, it has also somehow mystified what it is that businesses can do to help shape their success.
Great businesses are not just great because they provided a product or service at the right time in the right way, but because they produce a product or service consistently well and in a way that is produced efficiently enough to make a profit. And to do that they need to put the customer at the heart of their business in order for their business to flourish and last. And that's all a quality management system is.
Is there another thing we could call it to de-mystify it? I haven't been very successful at finding anything on the web. Even Wikipedia has a paragraph devoted to just explaining what it means:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_management_system
and the Business directory has something similar:
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/quality-management-system-QMS.html
I've talked about it on my Facebook page, putting together a 2minute video to help explain it :
https://www.facebook.com/Light-Blue-Consultancy-Company-Ltd-1596463133943386/
but I think it definitely has room for improvement!
Is there an image to denote what it is? If you GoogleTM "Quality Management System image" you get all sorts of complicated diagrams. One common theme though is a tick mark. That's how I arrived at my company logo with the help of my local printers ( http://www.154victoria.minutemanpress.co.uk ):
With my website designer (Mark from Ranch Studios http://www.ranchstudios.co.uk ) who then turned it into a wheel effect on my website (something which still makes me smile each time I look at it!) as the "blades" go round the different aspects that make up a QMS.
https://www.lightblueconsultancy.co.uk
Incidentally, the "blades" I chose because of my passion for rowing, something that extends into the choice of office I have: it's an old lock cottage overlooking the River Cam. Perfect place for peaceful thinking and watching the rowers, and indeed runners and cyclists and anglers, go by when I'm in need of inspiration or a break :- )
So for now, I'm working on helping my clients get their complicated business procedures and making them simple. Turning a scary looking audit report into biteable chunks that can easily be fixed. Writing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) so that staff can follow them and do things consistently well. And trying to get the word out there that quality is part of a business strategy, not a separate intangible thing.
Anyone have any tried and tested ways of getting that message across? I'd love to hear from you.
Next time: What is a good process?
