US TAG 176 Election Update: Same Names, Different Seats

In another astounding bit of tone-deaf incest, the incompetent leadership of the US TAG to TC 176 has announced their slate of nominees, and it’s the same old players jostling around into different seats. All the usual names appear, just as I predicted: Paul Palmes, Mark Ames, Lorri Hunt, Craig Williams, etc. Decade after decade, the same people doing the same thing, because it’s worked so well, as proven by this chart of skyrocketing US interest in ISO 9001:

Maybe if you turn the chart upside down it looks better?

Kissing Cousins

In any event, the nominating process has been the usual clown circus, but with outgoing Chair Alka Jarvis attempting to combat the criticism levied against the TAG for a clearly undemocratic process by wrapping the entire mess in a bit of theater. When Jarvis was elected, she was the sole hand-picked nominee, and no competing candidates were allowed. She even refused to provide a vision of her leadership prior to her coronation. This time, Jarvis — along with Nominating Committee members and permanent furniture Charlie Cianfrani and JP Russell — allowed for some competition. Sort of. They opened the nominating process to the members, and then promptly ignored the nominations and picked their own people anyway.

Before we get to the TAG’s official ballot, it’s worth examining the nominations it received, because the results are a hotbed of incestuous cronyism. I’ve prepared a handy graphic that shows just how dependent on careerist cronies the TAG is. The lines below show who nominated who, and you can see that over and over, one member nominated another member, and then was rewarded by being nominated themselves.

The relationships are interesting. For example, TC 176 cheerleader Denise Robitaille nominated her book’s co-author Lorri Hunt, without any consideration of just how bad that looks. ANAB’s boss Knappenberger also weighed in, showing how they continue to wield influence, despite ANAB’s claim that it is just an observer of TAG proceedings. Ron Lear and Dale Isaacs just traded nominations, hinting at a little blossoming bromance.  “TAG ethics expert” Paul Palmes just said STFU and nominated himself, and then reportedly grabbed a Kleenex.

Part of the fault of this self-lovefest is the fact that the TAG members themselves have been all but absent from any push to fix the mess. When you see nominations coming from only about a dozen people out of a total membership of 230, it’s a disgrace. So maybe the members get the leadership they deserve, and if that leadership continues to cripple their voices and run roughshod over their rights, maybe they deserve it. But face it, most of the members are only on the TAG in order to cash in on the marketing opportunities they think comes with saying “I’m on the US TAG to TC 176.”

The People’s Democratic Republic of TAG

Presumably, someone in the TAG leadership thinks the members are stupid enough to be fooled into believing this spaghetti map represents American-style voting taking place, but of course it doesn’t. The Nominating Committee whittled the actual ballot down further, filling the positions with the usual “safe” representatives who will kowtow to the ISO TMB, and continue taking marching orders from the Lorri Hunt / Jack West brigade. You see, nominations don’t mean anything, and only officially approved candidates can actually run. Here are the official ballot choices, approved by the NC:

This is not a happy set of options. The choice between Palmes or Williams for TAG Chair ensures that the US will continue to suffer the influence of self-promoting consultants who care not a bit for standards users, and have no sense at all what they have to go through. Let’s take a look, and make some predictions.

Chair: Dumb vs Dumber

Paul Palmes, as I have written before, is not a big thinker. He’s a “company man” who made his way through the TAG ranks by agreeing with Lorri Hunt, and allowing the leadership to use him as their go-to cheerleader. When I was on the TAG, the leadership made great hay out of the fact that he was one of the few members who actually represented an organization that was using ISO 9001 (Northern Pipe.) In those days, Palmes was treated like a child, as if he had been sitting at the kid’s table on Thanksgiving Day and was suddenly invited to give the family prayer; he seemed oblivious to the fact that the leadership was clearly using him to offset criticism that none of them had actual ISO 9001 experience. He was just happy for the attention.

Of course, soon enough Palmes quit Northern Pipe and took on his full time career as TAG lackey and ISO 9001 consultant. But anyone who has sat in on a Palmes event knows he is incapable of big thinking, and is obsessed with ensuring the US TAG does whatever the ISO mothership tells it to do. Worsening matters, Palmes suffers from “mic addiction,” seeking whatever speaking event he can get, even if it is to help promote a serial plagiarist who poses online as a woman to sell unaccredited ISO 31000 training certificates to duped clients. Under a Palmes leadership, the US will see a reduction in its world status like never before.

As for Craig Williams, he’s worse. When I met Craig we had a few conversations that were deeply, deeply troubling. I attempted to put forth a motion that would prevent TAG leaders from profiting from their roles, forcing them to hold off on any paid speaking fees, book publishing and other events until after they stepped down. The argument was called the “Jack West Effect” and posited that TAG leaders gained financially by making the standard as confusing as possible, by selling books, speeches and services to decipher the whole thing afterwards. It was Williams that shot the proposal down, making a vociferous defense that such profiteering was, in fact, necessary to allow people like Jack West and Lorri Hunt fund their activities. Predictably, Williams went on to write a book on ISO 9001 alongside Lorri Hunt and Denise Robitaille. Ka-ching!

(Technically, Williams works for Johnson Controls but since he’s joined the ISO book publishing circuit, I have categorized him as another consultant.)

Williams was also the architect behind a doomed attempt to overburden ISO standards users with an entire set of new certifications, something that would have made his CB friends happy, but which would have crippled entire US businesses. Williams was advocating for an automotive industry equivalent of NADCAP special process accreditation; when I asked him why he didn’t just work with NADCAP to create a universal program, he offered a wimpy excuse that alleged the two parties didn’t speak the same language. I gave Williams a real scenario where one of my tiny clients, with less than 10 employees, happened to provide both manufacturing and plating for automotive and aerospace clients, and how under his plan they would be forced to adopt a whopping SEVEN separate certificates (ISO 9001, AS9100, TS 16949, two NADCAP aerospace special processes, plus two new Williams-style automotive special process certs.) I told him that would put my client out of business entirely. Williams didn’t have an answer, and didn’t seem to care; worse, the nightmare scenario appeared to never have dawned on him, showing just how divorced from the realities of ISO standards users he is.

So the ballot options are bad because neither option is ideal, and it ensures that the TAG will continue to be beholden to ISO consultants, rather than actual user organizations.

Running the numbers through the Oxebridge 9000 Super Computer seems to tilt the Chairmanship towards Williams. Despite allowed him to occasionally use the microphone, few in the TAG have professional respect for Palmes and still treat him like an adolescent. He just doesn’t command respect. Furthermore, it’s not clear how he would fund the costs associated with taking on the Chair role, since he hasn’t been as successful as Jack West in publishing books and doesn’t have Jarvis’ Cisco to fund his airfare. Finally, the fact that Palmes nominated himself could mean he was asked to just to have a competing candidate on the ballot that wasn’t Alan Daniels, so in typical Palmes style, he offered himself up as the puppet, but without any expectation he would actually win.

Oxebridge prediction: Craig Williams is your new US TAG Chair, but Jack West (who nominated Williams) and Lorri Hunt will still be running the show from behind the scenes. Expect no change at all in US policy, or the disrespect we get from the rest of the planet.

Vice-Chair: Everybody Wins!

This looks like a competition, but it isn’t. The TAG actually has two Vice-Chair positions, and only two candidates, so both Mark Ames (of training organization AQS) and Jim Cosco (of Hewlett Packard) will be your new Vice-Chairs.

Cosco might bring something new to the table, since he’s a relative newcomer with impressive credentials, so I am happy about his win. Ames, however, enjoys the position which helps sell his company’s training programs. AQS is already aggressively selling ISO 9001:2015 deciphering classes, a benefit of having had Ames in place to ensure everything in the standard was nice and confusing. I recently reached out to AQS on this point, and was directed to Ben Ames, who apparently hadn’t done his homework on who I am, and instead started offering me compensation for client referrals. Unbelievable.

SC Chairs: Coronations Aplenty

For SC1, the subcommittee responsible for “concepts and terminology” and thus the ISO 9000 document, the only nominee is Govind Ramu, who nominated himself. Palmes was nominated, but isn’t listed, and it’s moot: he’s the chair of ISO’s SC1 right now, so he doesn’t need to chair the TAG’s mini-version of it. Ramu might be a good leader anyway, since he’s not entirely from the consultant mold, but it’s still unclear if he has the stones to be his own man, or just carry ISO water for Palmes and the rest. Fingers crossed.

SC2 is the subcommittee that oversees development of ISO 9001 itself, the QMS requirements. Lorri Hunt has been running this for the last seven billion years, so why change? It’s a shame, too, because Sheronda Jeffries would have been a great new voice with a more progressive, user-oriented point of view, although Jeffries nominated Palmes for TAG Chair, which tarnishes her rep a bit. But there’s no stopping the Lorri Hunt juggernaut, so let’s not even pretend.

SC3 is the committee responsible for “supporting technologies” and the development of the ISO 10xxx series of standards which no one reads. For example, SC3 created ISO 10002 on complaints handling, a document that every single CB and ISO body ignores on an hourly basis. So handing it off to another pirate consultant like Baskar Kotte — the guy who is pushing to fast-track development of ISO 19011 — can’t make things worse.

Final Tally: Consultants Win Big

So if the final tally goes as predicted, four out of six of the posts will go to private consultants who stand to win big on making a mess of ISO 9001 for decades to come. At least until the point that I finally get ANSI investigated for these conflicts, and potentially have the entire thing uprooted.  Then it will be fun to watch these career cronies flee the ship like mice, and deny any involvement. Fun times ahead?

If you asked me for my ideal votes, I’d have to say the following:

• Chair – Paul Palmes, since he can be manipulated, and is less nefarious than Williams. Not a great choice, though. I would have preferred Govind Ramu or Sheronda Jeffries.
• Vice-Chair – Jim Cosco, but kick Ames to the curb, as he’s too conflicted. Put Govind or Sheronda in there instead.
• SC1 Chair – Govind is fine.
• SC2 Chair: Sheronda. Failing that, a cactus. Anything but Lorri Hunt.
• SC3 Chair: who cares? Buy another cactus.

With voting set to close by October 20th, there’s still time to vote for me as a write-in candidate. My first act would be to revisit the TAG election rules so this kind of clown car crash doesn’t happen in the future, and to ensure we get actual ISO 9001 user organizations into positions of leadership.

Well, my first act would probably be to get drunk and eat chocolate, but I’d get to all that other stuff shortly thereafter.