We are all doing triple the amount of work we need to do, and most of us don’t even know it. At the same time, we are making things more difficult for everyone around us. The saddest part is that we’ve been doing this for a long time.

How is it that we manage to make this mistake but are not aware of it? It’s due to having disjointed quality, environmental, social, and governance management systems. I’m always stunned when I visit a company and find individual systems for quality, environmental, water, energy, health and safety, and risk management. The list goes on and on. In fact, all these systems have nearly the same functionality; the only differences are the record-level forms and data.

The good news (if you can call it that), is it’s not your fault. Most organizations’ management systems are the result of evolution from earlier systems that have been in place for years.

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