FWIW:
I read "Cheese" essentially for free while I had coffee and a Danish in the mega-bookstore in a nearby shopping mall.
An interesting allegory, but certainly not a roadmap to cure the "blahs" that often set in on many of us from time to time.
From your comments so far in this thread (plus one in the "how far to commute" thread), it sounds like you really need to have your batteries recharged and get a whole new perspective about the concept of an organization as an "organism," a living, breathing sentient creature.
As I see life, we are always presented with choices. Rarely do we ALWAYS make the right choices, but the real mark of successful, happy folks is how quickly they recognize when they have made a wrong choice and then move to some sort of "corrective action." lf
FMEA (failure mode & effects analysis) were 100% effective, there would never be a need for Corrective Action, would there?
It seems to me some of our Covers have already given some tips, one being to look at the ISO QMS as being the subject of "kaizen" (Gee! I detest that word, but many folks bitten by the Lean bug seem to need hearing it on a regular basis, not realizing Lean started in the USA without weird "talisman" words.)
First of all, ISO third party registration is only necessary if customers in the supply chain demand it. The basic concepts of documentation, employee and management involvement, continual improvement, etc. are really the hallmarks of
any effective business system. Does your organization require the "paper" to satisfy any customer requirement? If not, stop paying for one, but that DOES NOT mean trashing the concepts of an ISO management system.
Regardless whether the "paper" is required, it sounds as if the documentation aspect of the organization could be streamlined. Our task as professional quality folk is to show the benefits to the bottom line of ANY quality initiative. Rarely is there ANY documentation system more than a few years old WITHOUT continual improvement which cannot be streamlined to be more efficient and (usually) less expensive to maintain.
If you decide to hang around this organization, start a new thread to discuss how this streamlining might be accomplished. We have many wonderful threads already existing which discuss the documentation aspect of a QMS. Take some time to research some of them before starting a new thread. I particularly like the "4 page Quality Manual" thread
(
FAQ Thread: Poll: QMS (Quality Management System) Manual - The Boss Wants a 4 Page Manual - What to Do?  
for the insights it gives on how folks view documentation.
Ultimately, the first thing you need to work on is your own attitude toward the organization and the task ahead. Sometimes, you may need to examine things going on in your personal life to determine how they are affecting your professional life. Often, though, there are things going on in our professional life that are affecting our personal life and the cycle then becomes vicious. In the same manner I wouldn't hesitate to call in a consultant to help me in some aspect of running an organization instead of taking time to learn how to do it myself, I would never hesitate to get a consultant to help me figure out something in my personal life (physical, mental, social) instead of trying to figure out how to do it all by myself. If I break a bone, I go to someone else for an xray and bone setting rather than build or buy my own xray machine, so why wouldn't it make sense to do something similar for an emotional or social break?
