#241 Raise your Game With The Leadership Powerup Gameplan

Jan 28, 2026

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An ISO Management System can't survive without Leadership engagement. It was seen as such an essential aspect that 'Leadership commitment' became a key requirement of many ISO Standards back in 2015 when the Annex SL format was adopted.

It's easy to see why. An effective Management System will provide vital information for top management to make decisions on processes, policies and strategic direction.

So, how do you get leadership involved with your ISO management system?

In this episode, Steph Churchman is joined by Sarah Ball, the Service Improvement Manager at Blackmores, to discuss why leadership involvement is so crucial to effective ISO management, and explains how you can get their buy in whether you've got a mature system or are newly implementing ISO Standards.

You'll learn

· What is the isologyhub?

· What issue is the Leadership Powerup tackling?

· Who is the Leadership Powerup aimed at?

· What are the six steps in the Leadership Powerup Gameplan?

Resources

· Isologyhub

· What is the Isologyhub?

· The Integral Role of Leadership within ISO

· Aligning Objectives with Strategic Direction

In this episode, we talk about:

[02:05] Episode Summary – Blackmores Service Improvement Manager joins Steph on this episode to talk about the crucial role leadership plays in ISO management, and how you can get the most out of their involvement.

[00:45] What is the isologyhub? The isologyhub is our online learning platform for all things ISO. Its main feature is the ISO Roadmap, a 7-step guided approach to implementing your own bespoke ISO 14001 compliant Environmental Management System.

Since it's creation, it's grown to hold a library of over 200+ ISO related resources. The content available varies from quick accessible content such as ISO templates, ISO handbooks and short from video training we call Coffee Break Training which explain key elements of ISO Standards. This goes onto more in-depth content such as our ISO Pathways which take you through 3 levels of learning to help you progress from Learner to leader in your chosen subject area.

There's other exclusive content on there which you can dip into, including ISO templates, training videos and previous workshops covering topics such as ESG and AI management.

We also have a number of Gameplans, which are essentially guides where people can work through a particular set of information about a topic and get practical guidance that can be applied within their own organisation.

[02:05] What issue is the Leadership Powerup tackling? In the past, it was quite easy for leadership to lose interest in the Management System once it had been implemented. This was in part due to how Standards used to be written, and would result in the system being delegated to specific individuals.

In 2015 this, along with a number of other issues, were addressed and a new clause structure was introduced. This means that Leadership Commitment now isn't optional, as it's a direct requirement of all ISO Standards (Clause 5 typically).

The Leadership Powerup Gameplan aims to help leadership understand their role in making the Management System effective for the wider business. It helps to assess their current level of commitment and guides you through a path of improvement to get them to be a positive ambassador for the Management System.

Where leadership is concerned, it's important to remember that you're leading by example. If you don't care about the Management System, why should anyone else?

For those that want more of a deep dive on Leadership's role within ISO, check out a previous podcast.

[06:05] Who is the Leadership Powerup aimed at?: As a minimum it should be the individual or team that have day-to-day responsibilities relating to the management system.

Ideally you would also want a member of leadership, as you'll need their input to gauge the current level of commitment.

[06:50] What are the six steps in The Leadership Powerup?:

Step 1: Evaluate Leadership – For this step it's important that you're 100% honest in your reflection of how leadership are currently promoting and engaging with the management system. It includes a workbook to help you self-score, though we recommend getting a team involved who can help shape a full perspective their engagement in reality.

The included workbook also contains examples of key causes for a lack of leadership engagement. It walks you through the reasons for these causes, as it's only through understanding why something is happening is when you can seek to resolve the issues.

Step 2: Boosting Knowledge - This section works through what good looks like in terms of effective leadership commitment. You need to be able to understand the ideal end point before you can plan on how to get there.

Included in this section are key definitions and videos that break down what good looks like for leadership commitment.

Step 3: Planning Your Process – During this step you will plan on how to reach your end goal. By this point you will have assessed your current level of leadership commitment and you will have a good idea of what good looks like.

Included in this step is another workbook that will guide your planning process to answer the following questions:

· What do you want to achieve by the end of the Gameplan?

· What does good leadership engagement look like for us specifically in this business?

There's also a helpful section on understanding how processes interact, which is a fundamental part of ISO management. It's about how your business operates as one big system and not as siloed departments and processes. Having leadership understand that big picture so that they can communicate that impacts to certain teams does affect the whole business.

Step 4: Deliver Data – This section is all about information. Leaders love data as it helps them to make informed business decisions. This step guides you through what sort of data you should be gathering and how it can be presented to leadership.

This is crucial as it links back to one of the fundamentals of quality management, that being data-driven decision making. This could be in the form of customer feedback or employee feedback, or in other metrics such as health & safety incident etc. It's all about making the most of this data.

Step 5: Strengthening Strategy – It's very important that your ISO management system aligns with your businesses' strategic direction. This is a key way that you can get leadership involved in the management system, as the business direction will already be a key focus for them. Ensuring the management system not only aligns but helps to facilitate that will ensure that it stays at the forefront of their minds.

This step provides you with guidance on how to go about aligning leadership priorities and management system priorities.

Step 6: Consolidating Compliance – This step is about ensuring that you are doing what you say you're doing. The key part of leadership involvement includes leading by example, such as reviewing policies and updating them if they are no longer working for the business. It's about continuous review and implementation of key feedback and communication of changes happening within the management system from top management down.

This Gameplan can be useful for businesses where the Management System has been in place for a while and may not require their direct attention once certification has been achieved. In order to drive effective continual improvement, it's key that they still keep that management system at the core of their activities.

It can also be helpful when there is a change in leadership, and new individuals may not know what their level of involvement should be.

If you'd like to become a member of the isologyhub, we have an exclusive 20% discount available for listeners, simply Contact Us and quote: Isologyhub20 to claim that discount.

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