ISO 9001:2026 and the Path to a Higher Performing Organization
By Mike Craig | GKW Business Solutions
The release of ISO 9001:2026 gives business leaders an opportunity to strengthen how their organizations operate, solve problems, and deliver value to customers. Published in September 2026, the updated quality management standard places greater emphasis on leadership, quality culture, ethical behavior, and clearer consideration of risks and opportunities.
For manufacturers and service businesses, the transition presents a practical question: How can we use this investment to build a higher performing organization?
At GKW Business Solutions, we believe the answer comes from connecting quality management to business strategy, daily execution, employee development, and financial performance. Continuous improvement, Lean Six Sigma, and the Shingo Guiding Principles provide complementary ways to make those connections work.
Connect the management system to daily performance
A quality management system should help employees understand customer requirements, perform work consistently, recognize problems, and improve results.
Consider an organization that repeatedly misses delivery commitments. Its procedures describe scheduling, production, inspection, and shipping. Yet orders wait for information, materials arrive late, and supervisors spend their days expediting.
Improving that situation requires looking across the entire process. Where does work stop? Which handoffs create confusion? How are priorities established? When do leaders learn that a commitment is at risk?
The ISO transition provides a useful time to examine these questions and strengthen how work moves through the business.
Use Shingo principles to strengthen culture and leadership
The Shingo Model connects organizational results with employee behavior and the systems that shape that behavior. Its guiding principles address culture, continuous improvement, and alignment across the enterprise.
For GKW, these principles provide a practical lens for helping organizations turn expectations into everyday actions:
| Shingo principle | Practical application in the transition |
|---|---|
| Respect Every Individual | Involve employees in designing improvements and removing obstacles to successful work. |
| Lead with Humility | Ask questions, listen at the workplace, and coach people through problems. |
| Focus on Process | Investigate how work is designed and performed when results fall short. |
| Embrace Scientific Thinking | Use evidence, test changes, and verify results before adopting a solution. |
| Assure Quality at the Source | Build clear standards and error prevention into the work, with immediate responses to abnormalities. |
| Improve Flow & Pull | Reduce waiting and align work release with customer demand and available capacity. |
| Seek Perfection | Establish clear improvement goals and continue challenging recurring losses. |
| Think Systemically | Evaluate how decisions affect the entire business, including upstream and downstream processes. |
| Create Constancy of Purpose | Maintain consistent priorities and leadership follow-through. |
| Create Value for the Customer | Connect improvement priorities to the quality, delivery, and service customers need. |
These principles can support an organization’s ISO implementation; adopting the Shingo Model is a separate organizational choice.
Their practical value becomes visible in leadership behavior. When an employee raises a quality concern, does the supervisor investigate and help remove the cause? When production falls behind, do managers examine the whole process? When an improvement succeeds, do leaders reinforce the new way of working?
Those responses shape the culture employees experience.
Make continuous improvement part of daily management
Continuous improvement, or CI, gives employees and leaders a regular way to identify gaps, solve problems, and sustain progress.
GKW helps organizations establish routines that make performance visible and support timely action:
- Daily huddles with clear measures and priorities.
- Visual management that exposes problems early.
- Defined ownership and escalation paths.
- Leader standard work and regular workplace observation.
- Follow-through that confirms corrective actions remain effective.
These routines also provide a way to practice Shingo principles. Listening to employees demonstrates respect. Coaching demonstrates humility. Following an issue across departments encourages systemic thinking.
The result is a management system that helps people act on problems while they are still manageable.
Apply Lean Six Sigma to meaningful business problems
Lean Six Sigma adds structure to improvement efforts.
Lean helps teams identify waiting, unnecessary movement, excess work in process, and poorly designed handoffs. Six Sigma helps teams understand variation, investigate causes, and verify whether changes improve performance.
The method should fit the problem. A straightforward workplace issue may need a focused Kaizen activity and updated standard work. A recurring defect with several possible causes may require a DMAIC project: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control.
Training becomes more valuable when employees apply these methods to actual business priorities. GKW’s Yellow Belt, Green Belt, and Black Belt training and coaching can help develop that capability while advancing specific improvement projects.
Connect improvements to financial performance
GKW brings executive leadership, operations, and financial experience to the improvement process.
Reducing scrap can lower material expense. Improving flow can shorten lead times and reduce inventory. Reducing rework can release capacity for additional customer demand.
These outcomes need careful measurement. Released hours create available capacity; their financial value depends on how the business uses that capacity. Inventory reductions may release cash, while reductions in operating expenses affect earnings differently.
Connecting operating measures to financial results helps leadership select projects, allocate resources, and assess the return on improvement efforts.
Build a transition plan that advances the business
GKW can help organizations translate their ISO transition priorities into a practical improvement roadmap:
- Assess current processes, leadership routines, and organizational behaviors alongside the review of revised ISO requirements.
- Identify gaps affecting customers, quality, delivery, capacity, and cost.
- Select focused improvement priorities with clear owners and measurable outcomes.
- Develop employee capability through training, coaching, and application.
- Sustain changes through standard work, daily management, and leadership reviews.
Certified organizations should coordinate certification requirements and transition timing with their certification body.
Start your transition with a business performance conversation
Use the ISO 9001:2026 transition to examine where your organization needs to perform better—and what leadership, process, and capability changes will get you there.
Schedule a discussion with Mike and Will Craig at GKW Business Solutions. Together, we can identify your performance gaps and outline how continuous improvement, Lean Six Sigma, and Shingo principles can support measurable, sustained progress.
Contact Mike Craig at 316-680-9695 to start the conversation.
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