Not long ago, I was chatting with a friend who works as an energy management system consultant, and he told me a story that left me both laughing and crying.
A large wind power enterprise decided that its top management would push through the ISO 50001 energy management system certification. The consulting team came in, and their first step was to conduct an energy review—which, to put it plainly, means identifying which processes consume high amounts of energy and have room for improvement. However, before it even began, top management laid down the law: “Our equipment cannot be moved, and we won’t be doing any energy-saving, but we must pass the certification.”
I sat in silence for a few seconds after hearing that. This single statement was so concentrated, encapsulating all the absurdity of how certain enterprises implement ISO systems.
It Is Not That ISO Is Useless; It Is That You Never Intended to Use It
Every time someone tells me “ISO is useless,” I want to ask them in return: Is that thing you implemented actually an ISO management system?
Many enterprises get their understanding of ISO wrong from the very beginning. They think an ISO certification is a piece of paper, something that can be bought with money, a single page shoved into qualification documents to pad things out during bidding. Therefore, their logic proceeds naturally: I paid money to hire a consulting firm and a certification body, so this matter should be handled by them. Just like when I pay money to hire a cleaning crew, the cleanliness should be the responsibility of the cleaners.
However, a management system is precisely the kind of thing that cannot simply be bought with money. A consulting instructor is more like a fitness coach—they can teach you movements, make a plan for you, and correct your posture, but in the end, whether you can build muscle depends on whether you lift weights, sweat, and persist yourself. No one else can grow muscles for you.
Peter Drucker once said something very close in meaning: management is a practice and must be rooted in the local culture, society, and historical soil. Taking Japan as an example, he noted that although Japanese professional managers and those in Europe and America both do management, their inner cores are completely different.
When applied to ISO, the reasoning is identical. ISO standards are universal, but how they are implemented on the ground and whether they can actually run depend entirely on whether the enterprise genuinely wants to do it.
Why the System Became the Business of a Single Department
Even more common than “buying certificates with money” is the mindset that “the system is the job of the Quality Department.”
With an order from the boss, the system is dumped entirely onto the Quality Department or the system office. Then the Production Department says, “This is the job of the Quality Department,” and changes production processes without notifying anyone; the Sales Department says, “This is the job of the Quality Department,” and fails to review changing customer needs; Human Resources says, “This is the job of the Quality Department,” and no one manages the training for critical positions.
In the end, it turns into the Quality Department acting out a play all by itself—supplementing records and documents right before an audit, and reverting completely back to the old ways once the audit passes.
Why does this happen? Because the underlying logic of ISO is the “process approach”—treating all activities of an enterprise as a set of interconnected processes, controlled across the entire chain from input to output. If you dump it onto a single department, it runs counter to this logic from the very roots.
This is like hiring a soccer team and then telling the forward, midfielder, and defender: “Defense is the sole responsibility of the goalkeeper.” It would be a miracle if the goal didn’t turn into a sieve.
Landlord Mentality Meets Modern Management
You may have noticed that behind all these phenomena lies the exact same mode of thinking.
I previously wrote a note comparing “landlord mentality” and “capitalist mentality”: the landlord thinks, “I feed you all,” which is a relationship of subordination; the capitalist thinks, “I invite you here to help me make money,” which is a cooperative relationship. The landlord demands that tenant farmers labor for them at all times; the capitalist advocates that when a task is completed, a reward should be given.
Many enterprise bosses talk about modern management on the surface, but their heads are still filled with landlord mentality.
“I spent money, so this is your job”—behind this logic lies the treatment of a management system as a “goods” item that can be bought, and employees as tools to execute one’s own will. The core of landlord mentality is using money to trade for obedience, for results, for everything, while refusing to change one’s own behavioral patterns and power structures.
Yet the “leadership,” “employee engagement,” and “continual improvement” truly required by the ISO system are precisely what demand that the top leader change themselves first.
This explains why so many enterprises have implemented ISO for over a decade, yet their management level has not improved. Because the system is on paper, not in the organization; the files are on the hard drive, not in people’s behavior. If the boss doesn’t truly believe in it and push it, no matter how hard the people below try, it’s useless.
Should ISO Still Be Done After All?
Having said this, you might think I am advising everyone not to do ISO anymore. Quite the contrary.
As a tool and a baseline standard, ISO is extremely well-suited for Chinese enterprises. Standardized processes, traceable quality, and controllable risks—these are the infrastructure needed by modern enterprises, required regardless of national boundaries. ISO 9001 has been promoted in China for nearly 30 years and has extremely wide coverage. Over 80% of procurement projects in manufacturing list ISO certification as a qualification requirement; without it, you cannot even step through the door.
The problem has never been “whether ISO is suitable for Chinese enterprises,” but rather “whether enterprises are prepared to genuinely do ISO.”
If you just want to grab a certificate for bidding, then I advise you not to do it—it’s a waste of money, a waste of time, and a waste of a good tool that could have helped you. But if you genuinely want to elevate your enterprise’s management to a new level, to make processes run, to stabilize quality, and to make risks controllable, then ISO is an exceptionally useful toolbox.
The real problem is not “whether to do it” but “how to use it.” ISO is the skeleton, but the flesh and blood must be grown by yourself. How to make employees truly identify with it, how to combine the system with Chinese relational logic, and how to prevent institutional rigidity from stifling vitality—these are answers ISO cannot give; an enterprise must grope for them itself.
Chen Chunhua has studied a batch of leading enterprises in China and found that their commonality is neither rejecting Western management nor blindly copying it, but rather well-integrating Western systems and processes with indigenous Chinese cultural concepts. As a result, their management efficiency actually surpassed local enterprises using purely Western-style management.
Applied to ISO, this holds equally true.
So please, if you do not intend to truly do it, stop wasting costs on doing an ISO management system.
But if you are truly prepared, start with one thing: let top management sit in the front row first, instead of standing off to the side shouting orders.