The head of the Chartered Quality Institute and IRCA, Vince Desmond, woke up particularly caffeinated (or under the influence of something stronger) and decided that, despite having no demonstrable experience on the subject and no verifiable educational credentials, he’d rewrite the Quality Management Principles that ISO developed in the late 1990s.
Back then, ISO operated as a real standards development body and utilized industry subject matter experts to come up with the eight QMPs, which were then (sort of) incorporated into ISO 9001. A few years later, around 2004 or so, ISO would abandon that approach and begin operating as a de facto for-profit publishing company, putting standards sales above actual content, but back when they developed the QMPs, ISO was thoughtful and sober.
Well, Desmond is allergic to anything sober, so he thought he’d singlehandedly reinvent the QMPs even though nobody asked him to.
Remember, this is the guy who fought against cracking down on racism in CQI and IRCA because he didn’t like “the tone” of the request. Yes, the Karen literally engaged in tone policing to defend racism.
In a post on LinkedIn, Desmond took time away from biting the heads off of bats and small children to lay down his thoughts on updating the QMPs. The article itself is a melange of word salad, meaningless buzzwords, and grossly un-edited text, the latter of which is saying something since the guy runs a publishing company. (He’s too cheap to hire editors?)
Take a look at some of his suggestions:
From customer focus to customer experience: Customer experience’ may be a trending expression, but the point is to help reframe how organisations think about customers.
I have no idea what that even means. There’s nothing about the current QMP of “customer focus” that suggests you can’t “reframe” how you think about customers. Worse, Desmond doesn’t give any hint as to what type of “reframing” he’s talking about. He then thinks this QMP was about “contract review.” It was not.
From improvement to innovation: Deming said it. Incremental process and product improvement is not the answer to competing on quality. Innovating is. Not to devalue continuous improvement, but to elevate the concept especially where product, service and business models are being disrupted.
Ignoring the mutilation of what Deming actually said, that last sentence isn’t even a coherent set of words. It’s a portion of a clause that he never actually finishes. Also, companies can “innovate” themselves right out of quality. Look at Zuckerberg’s mood-swing-addled shift to “Meta” and the metaverse, which lasted all of a few months before he got distracted by AI. None of that was done with his customers in mind, but it all constituted “innovation.”
From evidence-based decision-making to risk-based decision-making: “In God we trust: all others bring data”. So said Deming, but the greater challenge for organisations is to make decisions based on a solid understanding of performance, in the context of strategy and risk appetite, and the wider impact on the other principles.
Here, Desmond just decides he’s smarter than Deming, and throws him under the bus entirely. Remember, “risk” was added to ISO standards as a sales gimmick, and is based on a non-peer-reviewed, made-up approach of risk that even risk management professionals don’t agree on. ISO had to form a special committee to try to standardize the definition of the word, only to have it close up shop without ever succeeding in its mandate.
And he goes on from there. He even throws in “innovation, digital and sustainability” because you can’t get anything published on LinkedIn now if it doesn’t include at least one of those phrases.
Now, remember, this is a guy who not only ignores stakeholder feedback regarding his companies CQI and IRCA, but will actively cut off communication and block people who don’t agree with him. So he’s not using any of the advice that he ejaculates from his slimy little beerhole and spews all over everyone else. CQI is a multi-level marketing cult, and IRCA auditor performance has been dropping like a rock for the past decade or two because their training is absolute shit. Vince Desmond should never be talking about quality and should go back to digging in his backyard for moles to eat.
Christopher Paris is the founder and VP Operations of Oxebridge. He has over 35 years’ experience implementing ISO 9001 and AS9100 systems, and helps establish certification and accreditation bodies with the ISO 17000 series. He is a vocal advocate for the development and use of standards from the point of view of actual users. He is the writer and artist of THE AUDITOR comic strip, and is currently writing the DR. CUBA pulp novel series. Visit www.drcuba.world
