I had a recent question posed me that I couldn’t answer immediately … one I had to think about for a bit.  The question was, “if all the machinations I went through to develop an ISO (International Standards Organization) Management System for my Maritime Certificate as a Crew Manning Office was actually beneficial to my company?”  My gut response was “NO” … then I thought about it a bit, and I realized there was much I learned during the 6 months it took to create the system that governed my Silversea contract.

If you are not familiar with ISO Quality Management Systems for business, here are its basic tenets:

1.  The system must demonstrate its ability to provide consistent products that meets customer, as well as regulatory requirements, and
2. Enhances customer satisfaction through the system application, including processes for continual improvement of the system.

In other words, once you have one in place?  It doesn’t stop there.  You must continue to revise it as needed, most specifically your “Document Control” (we had 81 documents in our document control to operate the Artists of Silversea program).  Even if ONE word is changed on any operating document, it has to be recorded, dated, and archived, with the new one going into the control system.  It is truly an organic way to operate a business.

My own Business Operating System had to marry the Maritime Labor Convention 2006 (my “regulatory requirement”), when it was finally ratified in August of 2013.  With that ratification, Silversea Cruises insisted any vendor who hired people they used as crew, had to be certified as a Crew Manning Office and Recruitment Placement Service.  I believe as I write this, Silversea is the only cruise line that requires this, as I have yet to meet any entertainment producer on other lines who had been asked to do the same.  I reached out to the entertainment operators on Seabourn, RCCL, HAL, NCL, Crystal, Akusa, Celebrity, and Saga, to be specific, and none reported they had to do the same, so not having a ‘go to’ source to achieve this certification made it doubly hard as well.  That meant I had to do a great deal of research on my own.

At the time, I employed a fabulous young woman as my Administrative Assistant, Valerie MacFarlane.  Val and I slaved for 6 months, figuring out this beast.  I am eternally grateful to the work she did, as had we not achieved certification, Silversea would break contract.  I was also lucky enough to have a brother in law, Wayne Williams, who is a consultant himself and works with ISO operating systems all the time, including their audits.  He was an invaluable source to me, as all the jobs held by the Artists of Silversea, as well as my Creative Team, depended on Choozi Entertainment LLC getting that certification!

So, thinking back to the original question, whether Choozi benefitted from creating the ISO Management System, I can honestly say YES!  The measurables we had to employ were many and just the exercise of figuring out how we were going to ‘measure’ something that is subjective … that being entertainment … was a learning curve in and of itself.  The photo above is Choozi’s BOM (Business Operating Manual) for the system we developed, and as you can see, it is HUGE in it’s scope.

From Corrective Action and Preventive Action Reports, to Quality Objectives, to KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators), to Customer Satisfaction Surveys (we developed ours with a 1 to 5 scale), to identifying who our internal and external customers are/were, the exercise that became our QMS (Quality Management System) gave me a thorough understanding of how complex successful businesses must think.  It definitely separates the girls from the women / the men from the boys!

BTW …  You cannot get certified as a Crew Manning Office / Recruitment Placement Services WITHOUT an ISO operating system in place.  It is not enough to say you “work under the rules governing the MLC 2006” or any other verbiage stating you comply, as the ONLY way to comply is to get certified, and the only way to get certified is with an ISO Management System in place for your business.

Choozi has started a Consulting Business in which to help new entertainment companies just starting out, or even older companies who desire to upgrade their own operating procedures, by creating these systems.  Our step by step approach to defining what your entertainment business requires is a result of our many years experience creating entertainment worldwide, while identifying the needs of our clients very successfully.  We have a wealth of knowledge that we would now love to share with our contemporaries.

Call 775 624 6694 for our Consulting Rates and Fees.