Where do you start?

"Congratulations, and welcome to WhizzBang Corporation! We're so glad you accepted our offer. It's good to have you aboard, and it's great to know you'll be taking over our Quality system. Now that you're hired, let me be completely candid. Things aren't where we want to see them. You'll find there are ... issues. I won't go into the details now. Better you look at it all with fresh eyes. But we know you're talented. Your previous experience is really impressive. So I'm sure you'll have everything shipshape in no time. Just remember, we're all counting on you."

Just what you wanted to hear, huh? You've just now taken over responsibility for a Quality system somewhere. Things are wrong and it's your job to set them right. But you don't actually know what's wrong, and it doesn't look like anybody's going to tell you. Besides, even if someone tells you where he thinks the problem is, how do you know that he's right? Maybe he doesn't see the whole picture. Or maybe the real problem is in his area, and he's trying to deflect your attention. What information can you trust, and what is just shadows in the fog?

Where do you start?

Audits. Start by doing internal system audits.

The thing is, unless you are prepared to tell everyone to scrap everything they are doing today and start over, you need information. But it has to be objective information. Confidential remarks that "Frankly, it's all Fred's fault" aren't good enough. A complete system audit won't catch every single problem, but it should highlight the areas of real concern and give you a good overall map that will let you plan your next steps.

What's more, you know you are going to get pushback when you try to correct things. People will tell you that you just don't understand—this is the way they've always done it, and it has always worked fine. But an audit gives you objective evidence. With that evidence, you can plainly show that the process is supposed to generate one kind of result but in fact it is generating another. It's not working. It has to be corrected.

Where you go next depends on what you find, of course. But start with a review of the whole system's status, backed up by objective evidence. Start with audits, and then go from there.

P.S.: I am assuming in all of this that the management system you work to actually provides for some kind of internal system audits. If your organization is governed by ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 45001, or many others like them, it does. The same is true for most other management systems that I know of. In the unlikely event that you somehow find yourself in a situation where there is no standard provision for internal auditing, implement them anyway in an ad hoc way. If anybody asks, you can always claim that you're doing a gap analysis.