Trish's Blog

I called my framework Weird Wisdom. In a room full of executives, budgets and risk registers, you can guess how that’s met. For some people the name files it under fluff before I have finished the sentence.

I understand it. But the belief that Weird Wisdom is the soft, optional part of running an organisation is wrong. And you don’t have to take my word for it. You can take ISO’s. The standards already ask for the “soft” stuff.

Most organisations run against a handful of ISO standards: ISO 9001 for quality, ISO 31000 for risk, ISO 56001 for innovation. They are audited, certified and reported to boards. Read them closely and they describe outcomes, not behaviour.

A standard can require continual improvement. It cannot make a team admit what is not working.
A standard can require risk-based thinking. It cannot make a manager act before the picture is complete.
A standard can require you to value diverse thinking. It cannot make a room listen to the person who disagrees.

There is a clause for leadership. In every standard.

Since 2012, every ISO management standard has been written to the same skeleton, the Harmonized Structure. It gives each one the same ten clauses. Two are identical everywhere: Clause 5 is Leadership, Clause 10 is Improvement, and the whole thing rests on risk-based thinking.

So when someone calls Weird Wisdom fluff, they are calling Clause 5 fluff. The auditor arriving next quarter does not agree.

What Weird Wisdom maps is Five behaviours that let people do the human work the standards assume.

Being comfortable with the Unknowns: The capability behind risk-based thinking. The Unknown is what you do not yet know; uncertainty is how it makes you feel. Build the first and the second settles.

Failure as growth: Continual improvement is impossible where people hide what went wrong.

Harmony in contradictions: Governance means holding quality, cost, risk and people at once.

Questioning the norms: Improvement means asking whether the accepted way is the right way.

Exploring the unconventional: A system cannot generate a new idea. People do, when allowed off the template.

The point? Weird Wisdom is not an alternative to the standards you report against. It is the human half of them.

A standard can require a capable, adaptable workforce. It cannot make that workforce think differently together the moment a decision is made. That is a behaviour, not a clause. It is also the reason two organisations holding the same certification perform nothing alike.

So the next time someone calls Weird Wisdom fluff, you have a straight answer. It is in Clause 5. It is in Clause 10. It is on the audit.