“Leadership Knows Who You Are”: Nigel Croft Posts Bizarre, Threatening Defense Against Charges of Profiteering

ISO gadfly Nigel Croft, who has sat on innumerable ISO committees and performed various TC 176 functions over the years, posted an angry, disjointed, and falsehood-laden rant on LinkedIn that included a weird threat to his colleagues. Yes, this is the same guy who just presented a formal plan to allow his task group to personally hold standard-making authority over all ISO technical committees.

Prompted by a post I made in which I mentioned Croft would stand to make a bit of money when ISO 9001 gets revised — the same post that drove his colleague Devindra Chattergoon to go nuts as well — Croft thought he would set the record straight. He doesn’t name me, but then does copy-and-paste a sentence from my post, so everyone knows who he’s ranting about.

There’s a lot wrong with this, so let’s unpack it bit by bit.

First, it’s a bit rich that Croft is suddenly claiming that Oxebridge reporting on ISO 9001 is “shoddy pseudo-journalism” since it has been Croft himself feeding me (and presumably others) “leaks” on ISO internal workings, and information on his colleagues, since at least 2014. You read that right: Croft has been ISO’s top leaker. Furthermore, in his messages to me over the years, he repeatedly claimed to appreciate my reporting but demanded he be kept off the record on that point. I think that ship has sailed.

Here is Croft in 2018 praising my work. (The “John” he’s talking about is ISO 9001 critic, John Seddon.)

There’s a lot more — a LOT — including him leaking information on Annex SL, ISO TC 176 meetings, etc. In one exchange he tries to get me to write a hit piece against a US TAG member who he had some sort of disagreement with (I declined.)

But for now, I’ll keep it at that. The point here is that for nearly a decade, Croft has been the source of much of the leaked information coming out from ISO, so his sudden Road to Damascus conversion to someone griping against the reporting that he, himself, contributed to is a bit rich.

Consider this, too: if he was leaking to me, a guy hated by TC 176, who else was he leaking to?

Busiest Non-Consultant Ever

The next claim is so outrageously false, I can’t believe anyone would believe it. Croft claims he has not been an “ISO consultant” since the “late 90s”. This is absurd and disproved by thirty seconds of Google searching.

In 2012 — which is about thirteen years after “the late 90s” — Croft formed The Croft Alliance, also called “TCA Global.” this was a dubious organization comprised solely of private consultants who were also TC 176 members, and received some (albeit muted) criticism for how Croft was overtly allowing TC 176’ers to profiteer from their work. The website was only shut down in 2020, and as of December 2019, was still selling Croft’s “quality management system” training and “conformity assessment” services. Here’s a screenshot from that date:

I first reported on Croft back in 2014, regarding this alliance, so it was already well-known that he was running it.

Furthermore, Croft then gave numerous seminars on ISO 9001:2015 presenting inside TC 176 information while using the TCA Global logo. So this was never a secret, and he was doing this in full view of both ISO leadership and the public. Here’s one example from 2012, which (again) is over a decade after the period that Croft now claims he stopped consulting. Notice how he uses his official title as TC 176 SC2 Chair, but with the TCA Global logo right on the slide deck.

Croft claims such seminars were unpaid or that he donated the money received to charity. Conveniently, donating to US not-for-profits can’t be proved or disproved, so we have to take his word on it, I guess.

But at the same time, Croft has made a second career for himself over at the United Nations Development Organization (UNIDO), as — and this is his word, not mine — a “consultant.” I am told by multiple sources this is a paid position, and not a volunteer one, and according to Glassdoor, the average pay for UNIDO consultants is €46,589 per year. Regardless of the fact that it’s pretty low, it’s still more than “free.”

What did Croft do at UNIDO? He wrote gave seminars and wrote papers about ISO 9001. So he quite literally “consulted” on “ISO.”  Here he is presenting for UNIDO on ISO 9001 in 2013:

If you are being paid to consult on ISO 9001, I suspect you meet the definition of “ISO consultant.”

I’m not sure how Croft thinks anyone in the world will believe he has not been consulting on ISO 9001 “since the late 90s,” but I do know that publishing such a false statement is likely a very severe violation of ISO’s Code of Ethics, as well as their policy on communication.

Weird Flex Lands an Ethics Complaint

Probably the most egregious, and unprofessional, flex is Croft’s quasi-menacing threat to people who might support me. He says, “the current TC 176 leadership knows who you are.” That is such an outrageous violation of ISO’s multiple rules on ethics and communication, it will defy all belief if Croft isn’t ejected from all ISO positions immediately. (But don’t get your hopes up.)

To be clear: one ISO leader cannot threaten others, in public and on social media, over disagreements. This should be blindingly obvious but apparently, we need to reiterate this because Croft’s hubris has risen to entirely new levels.

But if Croft himself has been ISO’s biggest leaker, and ISO hasn’t done anything about that, then what does he think the “current TC 176 leadership” is going to do to all these other people? So what if they know who anyone is? They are paralyzed by their own bureaucratic incompetence to do anything about it. And, heck, a lot of them are the other leakers.

But that brings us back to what leadership is willing to do. Based on this threatening, defamatory, and overtly false post, I have filed a formal complaint with the heads of ISO, TC 176, and TMB, calling for Croft to be removed for violations of the ISO Code of Ethics, Policy on Communication of Committee Work, and POCOSA (ISO’s copyright policy.)

So, yes, now the “leadership” knows where the problem is: it’s Croft himself.

Will they uphold their own procedures and kick Croft out? Under the leadership of corrupt, would-be banana republic strongman Sergio Mujica, it’s unlikely. Even though it’s already wrong to have conflicts of interest, and now Croft just appears to be full-on lying about them.

But it is interesting to note how the bad reputation of ISO 9001, and the horrible optics of this “six vote” fiasco to revise the standard, is now forcing folks like Croft to reverse course, and start denying responsibility for their work. Just a few months prior, Croft would have been trying to take credit for the next version of ISO 9001. Now he’s scurrying.