Your resume is a crucial document that showcases your professional identity. Throughout my career, I’ve reviewed hundreds, if not thousands, of resumes.

The challenge consistently lies in how to make your resume stand out in the crowd. Many students frequently ask about the best ways to update their resumes, specifically in the ISO Industry. Recently, I received an email that sums up these common concerns perfectly.

I recently emailed a student to follow up on a previous conversation. His response was:

I really appreciate how quickly you got back to me. It’s awesome when people are on the ball like that! Quality over deadlines is something I’m passionate about, and I hope to spread that mindset to my team. I’m really excited about our upcoming meeting and getting into some productive discussions with my boss. By the way, if you have a spare moment, I’d love to pick your brain a bit about handling bosses with different priorities, particularly when it comes to navigating situations where quality isn’t their top concern.

I’ve been reading a lot about Organizational Culture lately. In particular Michael Henderson’s book Above the Line. There are a few key areas that Michael focuses on in his book which can be viewed as ownership and accountability, alignment, measurement, change management, leadership’s role, communication and employee engagement. Do these seem familiar to you? They certainly do to me! So where does Culture fit in with ISO 9001 and a quality management system? This got me intrigued and so I took a new look at ISO 9001 with a fresh focus on organizational culture just to see what I would find.

In a recent Harvard Business Review article, What the Next Generation of Project Management Will Look Like, it states that a recent global Gartner survey suggests that project manager is actually expected to be one of the fastest growing project management office (PMO) roles across the next two to three years. An outcome of this survey identified Next-Generation Skills that Project Managers need, to have a decisive role to play in this new environment, where complex challenges must be addressed such as overcoming organizational silos, managing hidden interdependencies, and realizing cross-team efficiencies.

In a recent newsletter, I included the below paragraph:

This could be a challenge for hard-core systems people to get their heads around. You see, a quality management system promotes a ‘system’, it promotes processes, procedures, and evidence that they were followed. However, to build a culture to achieve enhanced customer satisfaction it should be happening ‘in the moment’. I can see some of you running and screaming already!

In a recent small poll I conducted on LinkedIn I asked the question Where does the organizational culture intersect with a quality management system? Where do you see the intersection in ISO 9001? The most common response was that the intersection in ISO 9001 stood squarely with Leadership.