I forget just how I came across the gem “4 to 10: Confessions of a Management Representative” by Deepu Krishnan, but I am glad I did. I downloaded it some time ago, and just got around to reading it. I’ve discovered this light, easy read is one of the best books on ISO 9001:2015 currently available. It’s also still totally free.

(UPDATE: the author wrote me to say the book is only free for those with Amazon Prime (like me) or Kindle Unlimited (whatever that is.) So I may be wrong about the price. Go check.)

Now, this is no deep implementation guide. It’s short and breezy — more like a very long article, in fact — and covers details on ISO 9001 only in passing. The real story here is one man’s experiences as an ISO 9001 “management representative” and many of his colleagues will recognize the experiences Krishnan talks about. It’s fun to play “hey, that happened to me!” as you read it.

It’s also just nice to see someone write an ISO 9001 book from an entirely different perspective, and without using a gerund in the title. (My book, “Surviving ISO 9001,” was itself a joke on that trope.)

Some Western readers will have to approach with caution; some of Krishnan’s idioms may not work for newer readers; at one point he jokes that “ISO MR” stands for “mentally retarded,” a phrase that is no longer used jokingly in the US, for example. Just remember the author isn’t from your country, and he’s not trying to insult anyone.

You can grab the book on Amazon, for Kindle download, here. Again, it’s still priced at $0, so it’s a steal. If Krishnan fleshed out the content a bit more — I’d love to read this book at three times the length — it would be worth a $50 cover price.

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ISO 14001 Implementation