Leadership Commitment and Management Review

Leadership commitment to management systems and communicating this commitment to the organization is critical to performance improvement. Encouraging leadership support for decisions on risk management can be challenging. The management review process required by ISO management system standards can help gain leadership commitment. Here are some recommendations for conducting good management reviews to gain leadership support and commitment.

Coordinate management review with other business review meetings.

Conducting “management review” during regular business review meetings gives the sense that the management systems is part of the overall business. Management reviews conducted infrequently and apart from the other important business management meetings contributes to the perception of the management system being in its own separate silo within the organizations.

Make Management Review Value Added.

Ensure the information being presents is actionable by leadership. Give them a few choices for recommendations with supporting information and ask them to decide. They will appreciate your opinion and recommendations to help make decisions.

Do the Math

Defend your recommendations for improvement with cost and return on investment calculations. Showing leadership how the management system helps save and even makes money contributes to their support and commitment.

Take good notes

Recording leadership decisions during the management review helps ensures follow-up from the review. Records of management review are also evidence of their commitment, especially during audits.

Timely Management Review Follow-up

Follow-up on management review recommendations in a timely fashion and report on progress at the next management review. This will enhance leaderships perception of the management system, their support and commitment.

Management Review Frequency

Most organizations perform periodic reviews of the business performance to make sure things are going along smoothly and to make any course corrections needed to stay on course. Integrating the management review with these regular business review meetings will help ensure that:

• Management system performance issues are addressed in a timely fashion
• The management system is integrated with all other business processes
• Provide timely information leadership needs to make important decisions about the management system.

Management Review Inputs

Management review meeting do not need to address all management review inputs during each meeting. Review inputs that should be addressed more frequently include:

• Progress toward achieving objectives.
• Follow-up from previous management reviews
• Status of corrective actions and incident investigation
• Results of other performance measurements

Other management review inputs can be reviewed less frequently or on an as needed basis such as

• Customer Complaints and interested party concerns
• Adequacy of resources
• Strategic Risks and opportunities
• Results of audits

The goal of management review is to provide information to leadership that it can act on. Planing and conducting good management reviews will enhance leaderships opinion and support of the management system.

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