By Richard Bevan

Editor's note: The following article was excerpted from Change Making; Tactics and Resources for Managing Organizational Change by Richard Bevan.

Gathering input from key individuals and groups — before, during, and after organizational change — is one of the keys to planning and sustaining a successful transition.

When change runs into obstacles or fails to achieve the intended impact, it’s very often because of unforeseen reactions and resistance.

Research to uncover and understand such resistance is an important part of the planning process. It enables you to develop responses to objections and questions, to involve key groups in planning to address issues, and to understand and address sources of resistance.

By Paul Scicchitano

With a new chair at the helm and nearly one million certified user organizations around the world, the drafting committee responsible for the popular ISO 9001 quality tool has begun preliminary discussions on the next iteration of the document.

Meeting in Bogota, Colombia on June 7-11, Subcommittee 2 of International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Technical Committee 176 (TC 176) held its 35th meeting at the COMPENSAR Convention Centre, but made no formal decisions regarding future revisions of the world’s most widely used quality management system standard, according to Nigel H. Croft, who recently became chair of the subcommittee.

By Paul Scicchitano

Interest continues to heat up for a future global energy management standard that holds the promise of financial savings for adopting organizations.

“I’m a big believer in any management system. I think this one is going to be a little bit more immediately tangible because we’re talking about direct savings in energy,” explains Edwin Piñero, a former US Presidential appointee, who chairs the International Organization for Standardization’s (ISO’s) drafting committee for the future standard that is intended to help organizations manage their energy consumption and reduce greenhouse gases through a systematic approach.

By Paul Scicchitano

Nine years after the worst terrorist attacks on US soil and five years after the costliest hurricane to make landfall in the United States, federal officials are rolling out a new tool to help business recover more quickly from future manmade and natural disasters.

The tool consists of a government-sanctioned certification program currently built around three business continuity management standards (BCMS) handpicked by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The third-party certifications will be sanctioned by the ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board (ANAB), which already accredits third-party certifiers for a number of related voluntary standards such as ISO 9001 on quality and ISO 14001 for environmental management.

By Paul Scicchitano

Third-party audits are expected to get underway in August for some 10,000 certified companies in the aviation, defense and space industries, lifting what had been an extended certification hang-up.

“It is hard to predict the numbers, but audits should begin in August,” confirms Tim Lee of Boeing, who chairs the Other Party Management Team of the International Aerospace Quality Group (IAQG), which administers the AS9100 certification scheme. The group is an international council of aviation, space and defense quality leaders.

By Paul Scicchitano

PHILADELPHIA — With 41,172 employees in 130 countries and 2009 revenues  of $8.3 billion, bearing manufacturer SKF is looking for bottom-line benefits from its sustainability program.

“It’s absolutely smart business,” acknowledges North American President and CEO Poul Jeppesen in an interview with Sustainable Success Alert (watch video). “It’s Smart business of developing the right products, being innovative and helping customers being sustainable, treating employees well, the environment and outreaching into the community.”

In the absence of a globally accepted definition, SKF defines sustainable development as “development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs.”

By Paul Scicchitano

The three business continuity management standards (BCMS) that were handpicked by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for a new certification program aimed at improving the ability of US business to survive a worst-case scenario all share common requirements, according to a Sustainable Success Alert review.

Moreover, the documents appear to share common elements with  other well known management system standards like ISO 9001 and ISO 14001.

By Rick Lepsinger

The oil spill is a tragedy that “never should have happened.” That was the sentiment expressed by BP CEO Tony Hayward during congressional hearings on the Gulf Coast oil spill. Obviously, no one would disagree with him — especially the Americans left to deal with the terrible aftermath. And Hayward is right: the tragedy really shouldn’t have happened. The fact that it did is a failure of execution.

For any business, the inability to get things done is a serious issue. If you can’t execute well, you aren’t going to be very successful even if you’ve got a great strategy, terrific products, or talented employees — and as we’ve seen from this event, you could potentially cause significant problems for others as well.

It’s obvious from recent events that BP has an enormous execution gap. Had the company focused on recognizing and closing that gap, it may have prevented this unprecedented disaster.

By Paul Scicchitano

In his later years Reginald N. Shaughnessy preached the bottom-line benefits of integrating quality with other management systems, yet the scrappy Welsh steel executive will be remembered most for his role in launching the global ISO 9000 quality phenomenon.

Shaughnessy, who passed away recently in Bancroft, Ontario at age 77, was the former chair of International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Technical Committee 176 (TC 176), which publishes the popular quality standards and other consensus-based guidance on quality.

Prior to being named chair, Shaughnessy also chaired Canada’s work on national quality standards, which predated the publication of British Standard 5750, often considered to be the forerunner of the ISO 9000 standards.

By: Dr. Michael J. Dreikorn

Volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis — oh my.

When we think of natural disasters, it is usually as a result of watching a newscast from an event occurring in a far off land. 

It's human nature not to prepare and develop contingency plans for natural events that are infrequent and mostly forgotten.

However, as industries become globally stretched and technology becomes hyper critical to process controls, organizations should be prepared to manage whatever mother nature throws at them.