Objectives and planning to achieve them

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Section 6.2 is entitled “Quality objectives and planning to achieve them” and it requires you to establish quality objectives at relevant:

• Functions,
• Levels, and
• Processes

as needed for the quality management system.

So what is a quality objective? The short answer is that a quality objective is a quality result that you intend to achieve.

A quality objective is:

• Something that can exist at multiple levels and functions in the company.
• Something that can pertain to single or multiple processes.
• Something that pertains, in this case, when relevant to quality.

So, when is it relevant to have a quality objective? Notice that I don’t ask when is it required to have an objective. The standard is silent about how many objectives to have, or at what functions, levels or processes you should have objectives. It only requires you to establish objectives when relevant. Relevance is determined by context, including certain factors that we will now discuss.

We already had the first hint of when it is relevant to have a quality objective – the standard said “as needed for the quality management system” – i.e. as needed to meet the purposes of the quality management system.  Think in terms of “where will a quality objective help us to meet our strategic quality goals”.

Additional hints of when it is relevant to have a quality objective come from other parts of Section 6.2.  

Quality objectives are relevant when required by, or supportive of, applicable requirements.  

Quality objectives are relevant when in alignment with, or supportive of, the quality policy.

Quality objectives are relevant when supportive of conformity of products and services.

Quality objectives are relevant when they operate to enhance customer satisfaction.

We can see from this that relevance has a lot to do with the larger context of the organization, and the resulting strategy and policy.

So the relationship between context, strategic direction, the quality policy, and quality objectives begins to take shape.  

The context informs the strategic direction, which informs the quality policies, which inform the quality objectives. Or at the very least, these are to be in alignment with each other.  

Here is an example of one objectives methodology that, I believe, reflects this perspective.

[SLIDE 10]

This is a diagram using the OKR methodology. The OKR methodology focuses on using Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to guide outcome-based success at all levels in the organization.   

We can see at the top of this diagram in the yellow box the high-level outcome, what you might call a strategic goal. Supporting that is three objectives, in the green boxes, which in turn are supported by the Key Results in the blue boxes.  In this case, key results are brought about through projects, the orange boxes. Each of these objectives is made and implemented at different levels of the company.

Here is an example of this approach in practice.

[SLIDE 11]

Here we cannot see what the 2018 Strategy is, but we can see that management extracted three objectives from their strategy:

1. Increase market share by 10%
2. Develop new manufacturing design technology
3. Improve internal workflow

Under each objective is a few “key results” that have been determined to be important to accomplishing those objectives. These key results have a corresponding project for bringing about the desired outcome.

Note that under the ISO definition of “objective,” all of the above, whether at the objective or key result level, would be considered objectives. Remember that an objective is any result you intend to achieve.

So the terminology used to describe your objectives is not what is important.

Under ISO, the term “objective” is intentionally defined very loosely so as to include almost any result that you intend to achieve.

Therefore, you are free to use whatever system you want for naming, organizing, and tracking your objectives.

Just make sure that you choose objectives that are relevant — meaning that they are in alignment with your context, strategic direction, quality policy, and promote conformity, customer satisfaction, and the other needs of your quality management system.

You can have objectives that may not meet these criteria, such as financial or marketing objectives, but you are required to have specifically “quality“ objectives.  Financial objectives alone will not aid you in your compliance with ISO 9001.

The next part of Section 6.2 requires you to establish quality objectives that are:

• Measurable,
• Monitored,
• Communicated, and
• Updated as appropriate.

Remember that one of the criteria that your objectives have to meet is that they have to be measurable. The metric you intend to use for your objective could be evident in the objective itself, say, if it were worded “Increase market share by 10%,” as we saw in our OKR example. But usually further definition is still required. How do you plan on increasing market share by 10%? How are you going to measure your progress towards that goal at relevant functions, levels, and processes, as section 6.2 requires?    

In association with increasing your market share, let’s say you decide that you need to increase your online traffic and overall presence. This is another objective.  and maybe one of your goals to get there is to achieve better search engine optimization. How will you turn these into measurable objectives?

In this case, you might get together with your SEO expert and identify ways to measure search engine optimization improvement, and set some reasonable goals that correlate to those metrics.  Make sure the metrics you select are truly indicative of whether you are reaching your end goal. For example, for our SEO example – you might decide to measure the increase in the number of backlinks to your site, or the amount of added content to your site, because your expert says that these metrics are correlated to higher search engine rankings. However, you should also monitor organic clicks to test your assumptions and see if your efforts are actually resulting in the increased traffic and exposure that you hoped for. At an even higher level, you should also have a way to measure whether the increased traffic and exposure to your website is in fact resulting in a higher market share or not – the higher market share is, after all, the ultimate goal that all of these other objectives are supposed to be working for.

Depending on the complexity of your organization, selecting objectives and monitoring them can be simple or complicated. For some companies, it is as simple as selecting a few rather obvious objectives, and then ensuring that measuring, monitoring and evaluation is occurring as appropriate. For other companies, however, competitive change may be the only constant, and successfully meeting complex strategic and competitive goals is essential for survival. In such cases, objectives are often more numerous, evolving, and managed from multiple tiers.

Section 6.2 requires that you “maintain documented information on the quality objectives” including:

• Documented objectives, and
• Measurement and evaluation records.

NOTE: Some auditors will want you to have a certain number of months of data collection on you objectives before they will let you pass a certification audit.  Be sure to ask your prospective auditor how much historical data they will want.

Also section 6.3 requires that when planning to achieve your objectives, you identify the following:

• What will be done,
• Who will be responsible,
• What resources are required,
• When it will be done, and
• How the results will be evaluated.

In our OKR example, this would be done at the project level. Although not required by the standard, I would recommend documenting these activities as well for control and auditing purposes.

For more information on setting and documenting quality objectives, see our implementation videos for section 6.2. Also see our template library for various examples of systems for managing quality objectives.