Reports and quality
Getting out the numbers you have to show, and handling what went wrong.
Reports and analytics
- Getting out the numbers you have to showStart hereWhat can be measured, for whom, and which number does not mean what it looks like.
- What to show at the Monday meetingStart hereThree figures and a list of names. Everything else is surplus.
- The monthly report in ten minutesStart hereThree figures, one comparison and one sentence. The rest is padding.
- The report an auditing customer asks forGoing furtherWhat to show, in what format, and what not to send by email.
- The report an insurer asks forGoing furtherAfter an incident, what decides the payout is not what happened: it is what you can show from before.
- When the numbers get worseGoing furtherReporting a bad figure is easy with a cause and a plan attached, and very hard if reported late.
- The report that turns into a monthlyGoing furtherSomeone asked once, liked it, and now it is expected monthly. What must be pinned down is not the result: it is the definition.
- Knowing whether this is improvingAdvancedThree numbers that tell the truth, and two that mislead.
- When the metric rates peopleAdvancedThe moment a number rates someone, it stops measuring what it measured. Not through bad faith: by design.
Quality and non-conformities
- Getting ready for a certificationStart hereThe six months before, and what can be built meanwhile.
- Recording a non-conformityGoing furtherWhat went wrong, what was done, and how to prove it later.
- When a supplier keeps failingGoing furtherFrom an isolated incident to a decision: when there is a pattern and what to do with it.
- The internal audit, without the theatreGoing furtherIts job is finding problems before someone else does. If it finds none, something is wrong.
- Raising a quality claim with a supplierGoing furtherWhat has to be gathered before writing the claim, not after.
- The trial period for a new supplierGoing furtherSix months to find out whether they work, with criteria decided before starting.
- When the audit finds somethingGoing furtherA finding is not a failure. What is: the same finding two years running.
- Analysing why something happenedAdvancedThe difference between fixing a case and fixing the cause.
- Proving compliance without showing the documentsAdvancedA client wants assurance; your contracts with third parties are not theirs to read.
- When your client wants to audit your supplierAdvancedThree parties, two contracts and an awkward question: how far your duty to disclose reaches.
- The corrective action that never closesAdvancedOpened at the audit, worked on for two weeks, then left. And the same finding returns the following year.