Mistakes and How to Make Them

Have you ever been driving down the highway (or freeway if you’re from California) and noticed on the backs of big trucks the statement “ISO 9001 certified”?  Ever wonder what that means. Well, being curious and blessed with a few minutes between projects (it's been crazy around the shop lately) I decided to find out what that stood for.  The following comes from the official ISO (International Organization for Standardization) brochure: (check it out if you want some bed time reading)
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The objective of ISO 9001 is to provide a set of requirements that, if effectively implemented, will give you confidence that your supplier can consistently provide products and services that:

• Meet your needs and expectations
• Comply with applicable regulations

What is ISO 9001? ISO 9001 adopts a risk-based (“preventive”) approach to quality that covers a wide range of topics, including your supplier’s top management commitment to quality, its customer focus, the adequacy of its resources, employee competence, process management (for production, service delivery and relevant administrative and support processes), quality planning, design of the products and services it provides, review of incoming orders, purchasing, the appropriate monitoring and measurement of its processes, products and services needed to ensure conformity, its processes to resolve customer complaints, corrective actions, and a requirement to drive improvement. Last but not least, there is a requirement for your supplier to monitor your perceptions about the quality of the products and services it provides to you.”

Basically, what this certification is all about is showing your customers, clients and the world at large, that you take the time, have the skills, continue to improve your processes and follow up with clients to provide them with the most consistent, accurate, repeatable, reliable, and highest quality product or service, each and every time.  Actually, it's a really important standard for all industries to help ensure their products or services are consistently of the highest quality so their clients and customers can trust the what’s provided by a given company. Again, sighting the same brochure:

“Conformity to ISO 9001 means that your supplier has established a systematic approach to quality management and is managing its business to ensure that your needs are clearly understood, agreed and fulfilled.”

And now that you’re totally bored and wondering what in the world this has to do with music preparation, I would ask that you go back and reread that last quote because it is vitally important.  The music preparation business is a service business where we work with our clients to understand their needs and bring our expertise to help them fulfill their goals for any given project. If we’re listening to, establishing trust with, and serving our clients in a way that ensures the best quality product or service that meets and exceeds the client’s needs, then we are fulfilling the purpose of the ISO 9001 standards and, more importantly, fulfilling the purpose behind all we do at Engraver’s Mark Music.

So, what happens when something goes wrong?  

Part of my motivation for writing this blog post is a sort of confession so you can see what goes on behind the scenes here at EMM and then how we addressed an issue that occurred with a client.  Recently, we had a client call us about something being wrong with a vocal part we had prepared and printed for a studio session. The project was rather large collection for a publishing company, and we have worked with the company and arranger for years.  For these sessions, they didn’t need an in-studio librarian, so after dropping off the parts and talking briefly with the producer and arranger, I left to go back to the office and the next project. Days where we have multiple sessions going at one time can be really stressful.  We’re always “on call” whether we’re in studio with the client or not and the last thing we want is to get a call from the client during the session since that’s almost always means something is either missing or incorrect.

That afternoon, I got a call from the client saying there was an issue with a vocal part for a particular arrangement.  What ended up happening was a miscommunication on our part that lead to us printing an earlier version of the part instead of the most current one.  That problem was quickly caught by the arranger and they moved on to another piece while they called me to see what could be done. Actually, we had the correct part, all set and ready to go, but somehow, we just printed the wrong one.  I sent them a pdf and the client printed it at the studio. In the end, no time was lost at the session and everything was finished on time and on budget. Problem solved and no one got hurt. The client was very forgiving and wasn’t worried about it at all.  We took the printing charge for that particular piece off our final invoice (since we didn’t deliver the correct product) and everything ended just fine. We’ve since done 4 more projects with this client, so I guess they’ve forgiven us. Maybe the gift box of fine chocolates and some nice bottles of liquor helped as well….

Anyway, the fall out of this was that we changed the file naming system we have internally as we work on projects and a few more details about our print process to ensure these errors don’t occur again.  It was very stressful for me getting a call like this from a client but it spurred a renewed drive to look again and again at all our templates, processes, procedures and interaction with our clients, so we are confident in all that we do, so our clients know we are fulfilling their needs for any given project.

Yes, Engraver’s Mark Music makes mistakes.  The vast, vast majority never leave the office and make it to the studio or publisher, but it happens.  So, how do we respond to that as a company? We first take the position that we don’t assume the client must be wrong.  There are companies out there that do. After fixing the issue, we truly and honestly go back and find where it went wrong so we know how it happened.  Then we take the time to adjust our systems to prevent it or setup a new protocol, so we are on the lookout for those issues in the future.
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The worst thing a company can do isn’t making a mistake (though that’s never a good thing), its making the mistake and not learning from it.  That’s how a company learns to make mistakes, by creating an environment where issues not only happen, but aren’t addressed. It shows the client how committed the company is, not only to their project, but also how committed the company is to improving everything they do.  
Engraver’s Mark Music strives to always be improving and taking our mistakes are opportunities to improve all we do.  So, ask us how we’ve made mistakes and we’ll show you how we’ve improved and how we plan to continue to do so. Partnering with Engraver’s Mark Music means that we’ve established a systematic approach to quality management, and we manage our business to ensure that our client’s needs are clearly understood, agreed and fulfilled.