People … the bane and curse of technicians everywhere. Some people do what they want, some do daft things, many can’t always be relied upon, or their behaviour predicted. But before we wish for a system devoid of these irritations, we urge anyone of that mind to take heed of the prophetic messages laid out for our caution in Alex Proyas’ excellent documentary I-Robot. In this cinematic lesson we see that robots have an inherently evil disposition. Even worse than people in a lot of ways, so be careful what you wish for

Anyway, like it or not, the performance of a system is affected by the behaviour of the people in it. They are affected in turn by several factors, their health and well-being, their state of mind, their competence and, last but not least, their motivation. This somewhat inconvenient situation is nevertheless recognised within ISO 9000. Involvement of People is listed as one of the 8 underpinning principles of quality management. Only problem is, the auditable standard does not devote much effort towards defining any required system attributes that are likely to promote the principle, save perhaps for a bit of training (clause 6.2.2). It stands as a principle more or less absent of requirements

The main reason for the omission, we suspect, is that the subject is HAAAAARD. It’s tough. The concept of motivation is supported only by a load of theories. Not laws or rules, just theories. None are proven and not all are necessarily consistent with one another. So may we suggest that ISO 9001 takes the convenient option of side-stepping the issue for the time being? Let’s face it, many of us do the same. How often do we see adverts for “self-motivated individuals”. What should that tell us about the job? Don’t expect excitement? Don’t expect any thanks, recognition or encouragement? Maybe it should set the alarm bells well and truly ringing as we could often read between the lines “Sucker required for god-awful job”

Deming, however, believed people do actually carry an inherent motivation. So maybe this concept of a “self-motivated individual” is no fallacy, after all. He believed each of us holds a desire to do a good job and we take pride in doing so. If true, that’s has to be a good thing, hasn’t it? Because, as leaders and managers, it gets us off to a bit of a flying start
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