Today I overheard someone saying “Oh, but we have to do all that extra work! We are ISO 22000 certified, you know!”.

That set me thinking. Do we strive so hard to get certified and then spend the little that is left of the rest of our lives groaning under the strain of fulfilling all that the standard requires? If we manage to run a marathon in two-and-a-half hours but feel like dying at the end of it and then spend the next week recuperating from its effects, did we really achieve anything worthwhile? Now, if we had to strain ourselves to the limit in order to save a life or address some similar emergency, that is a different thing. Would your organization collapse without that ISO certification? Or would it collapse because of it?

We ought to accept awards, certifications and the like only if the qualities and attributes those awards are for have already become part of our culture, or become second nature to us. If not, would it be worth killing ourselves to get it?