Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon Maybe it is semantics, but I think there is benefit in distinguishing among these three concepts, understanding the purpose of each of them, and the responsibilities of leadership and management for each of them. By making this differentiation, organizations have a richer set of tools for becoming better. My comments are occasioned by a recent McKinsey & Company commentary I read, entitled "Build a change platform, not a change program." In this commentary, Hamel and Zanini assert that continuous improvement requires change platforms rather than top-down, leader-managed change programs. And I agree that continuous improvement (and innovation) require leader-inspired environments or platforms that encourage intelligent risk-taking, local improvements, cross-organizational collaboration, and best practice sharing. However, in my opinion, that is different than strategic change management which is leader-driven and initiative based. Here is where the confusion enters in the McKinsey blog. They discuss social media, such as Facebook and Pinterest as examples of change that can’t and shouldn’t be managed by leadership. These are innovations, not examples of change management and the two concepts should not be equated or confused. Let me briefly explore continuous improvement, innovation, and transformational change management to provide some definition around each that might encourage the use of all three in your organization. Continuous improvement involves the ongoing improvements to processes and products that result in incremental improvements, cost savings, and productivity enhancements. Continuous improvement is part of everyone’s job in a high performing organization. Innovation involves discontinuous or breakthrough improvement of products, processes, or performance that result in new dimensions of organizational performance. Innovation can result from brainstorming, research and development, outside-the-box thinking, serendipity, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Innovation can come from anywhere in the organization, but requires a supportive environment set by senior leadership; an environment that encourages intelligent risk taking and recognizes that there will be failures in pursuing some of those risks. Change management is a leadership induced process that involves transformational organizational change that leadership controls and sustains. It requires dedication, involvement of employees at all levels, and constant communication. Transformational change is strategy-driven and stems from the top of the organization. Its origin may be from needs identified within the organization and it requires active engagement of the whole organization. All three activities should harness the minds and energy of employees. Change management is episodic and disruptive to the organization; innovation and continuous improvement should be ongoing and be constant sources of building competitive advantage. For innovation and continuous improvement, senior leaders are enablers and cheerleaders. For transformational change management, senior leaders are the chief agents. Sometimes lines among these concepts may blur, but the construct as three different concepts provides a framework for recognizing that different types of opportunities exist and all should be considered in seeking organizational performance excellence. All three concepts are embedded in the newly released 2015-2016 Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence.

Posted by Christine Schaefer About five years ago, two former leaders of Baldrige Award-winning organizations had a friendly conversation at a backyard social event. The two American executives, who had both worked with health care organizations, discussed the need for a fundamentally new way to address the nation’s problems. In particular, they considered the challenge of improving community health and education—and the economy, too. That conversation led to ambitious plans to cultivate an "archipelago" of high-performing, healthy communities in the United States. In each community, leaders of organizations from different sectors would work together to achieve and maintain excellence on  measures of health, education, and economic vitality (including employment). They would do so using a framework based on the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. The initiative is now known as Communities of Excellence 2026. The story of its conception was conveyed to me recently by Stephanie Norling, the organization’s managing director. The founders were Lowell Kruse, who had led Heartland Health (PDF profile) from 1984 until 2009 when the organization received the Baldrige Award; and Richard Norling, who served at the helm of health care alliance Premier Inc. when that organization became a Baldrige Award recipient in 2006. Kruse and Norling incorporated Communities of Excellence 2026 as a national, independent nonprofit organization in 2013. According to the organization’s foundational document, its aim is "to advance the common good by providing the roadmap for a journey to sustainable community performance excellence." Stephanie Norling pointed out that the name Communities of Excellence 2026 is based on the 250th anniversary of the United States’ founding as a nation. As the foundational document states, "Building on the foundation of democracy and liberty established by the nation’s founders, communities engaged with Communities of Excellence 2026 will have set America on course to again lead the world in health status, educational attainment, economic prosperity, and other key measures of community health and well-being." The organization envisions that participants in the initiative "will consistently be the top-performing communities in the nation and their success will meaningfully influence others across the country to strive for community performance excellence." Norling explained that the initiative will help communities work together across sectors and "support them to implement the framework, measure progress, define their practices and capabilities, and benchmark" their success. "We’d like to help communities develop collaborative practices to implement sustained community change," she said. "Communities are the level where improvements can be made most effectively," she added, invoking an observation by Don Berwick, former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. In Berwick’s letter of support for Communities of Excellence 2026, he writes,   My past experience as president and CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services convinces me that traction for real change is best achieved at the level of the community. A smaller subset of actors lacks the leverage needed to act on the system as a whole, and larger aggregates tend too often to get stuck in political complexity. To act effectively, however, communities need the guidance of a conceptual framework, and an adapted Baldrige Criteria set hold great promise as such a framework. As a former member of the Panel of Judges for the Baldrige program, I know how deep that framework is. Norling explained that her organization is planning three-year pilots in four settings: a small rural community, a rural region, a small urban area, and a large urban area. The first three pilot sites identified as ideal settings are Lake City, Iowa (a small rural community); northwest Missouri (an 18-county rural region); and Rochester, Minnesota (a small urban area). Selecting a large urban community is still in process. "The idea is that at the end of the pilot phase, we will have a fully refined and tested framework," Norling said. She stressed that the Baldrige Criteria-based framework will provide communities with a consistent approach to improving performance. The adapted framework initially focuses on health, education, and economic prosperity, but future participants in the initiative may choose to add a focus on improving performance in other sectors. How can community leaders and others learn more about the progress of this initiative? "We’re rolling out a new website and blog," said Norling. She encourages anyone interested in more information to contact her at snorling@communitiesofexcellence2026.org. Editor’s Note: Baldrige Program Director Bob Fangmeyer recently accepted an invitation to join the board of directors of Communities of Excellence 2026.

Posted by Christine Schaefer Last spring in this space we highlighted the continued progress in recent years of the Baldrige Award-winning Iredell-Statesville Schools (I-SS) of southwestern North Carolina. Among economic challenges that the 21,000-plus student district had faced over the previous five years, we noted, "Cuts in tax-based funding have amounted to millions shaved from annual education budgets. And the number of students poor enough to qualify for free and reduced-price school lunches has risen from 35 percent to just under 45 percent of the student population." Yet the district is still enhancing and maintaining improvements in wide-ranging performance areas. It does so by adhering to a systems perspective and other aspects of the Baldrige excellence framework it adopted 13 years ago. I-SS has provided inspiration and guidance to struggling school systems around the country by sharing its story and practices. Therefore, we recently asked for another update from Melanie Taylor, I-SS Deputy Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction. Taylor illuminated how public school districts can benefit from using the Baldrige framework for excellence despite the heightened poverty of U.S. schoolchildren today and other economic and social challenges: "As public schools are facing more and more challenges through increased competition and declining budgets, using the Baldrige Criteria can help districts work smarter with fewer resources," she said. Baldrige-using districts accomplish this, she explained, "by examining key processes to help determine what’s working and what needs to be improved or eliminated altogether." "As a district, we’ve been able to maintain market share and increase or maintain performance while [tax-based] resources and budgets have continued to decline," she added. "By gathering feedback even from those who choose to leave our district, we’ve been able to make improvements to the organization." According to Taylor, such feedback "has indicated a need to increase rigor and choice in the district." In response, over the last six to seven years I-SS has expanded "choice options" for students, including early college programs, career academies, dual-immersion language programs, and the International Baccalaureate program, despite declining budgets. This expansion has been possible through alignment of district resources and processes, she explained. Referring to her district’s continued use of the Baldrige Education Criteria for Performance Excellence since its 2008 Baldrige Award, Taylor said, "It’s always a challenge to keep the focus. You have new staff or board members that don’t understand because they don’t have the background in continuous improvement. You continually have to on-board staff with the ‘why we do this.’" Taylor pointed out that the accountability and sharing of control that are expected in the district "make some uncomfortable." Yet on a hopeful note, she added, "Most folks get it once they’ve seen it in action and see the positive results." Among those results, I-SS has sustained dramatic improvements since 2002 on measures such as its high school graduation rate, student performance on SAT tests, state academic ranking, and percentages of highly qualified and National Board-certified teachers. I-SS also has improved its financial and budgetary results, in part by winning large grants in recent years to support student learning. For example, Taylor affirmed that I-SS is one of just seven school districts in the nation to receive a $5 million federal i3 grant, which required a $1 million private match, and that it is one of 16 districts nationwide to receive a $20 million "Race to the Top" federal grant. Taylor further noted that I-SS is the only public school district in the country to have received both of those federal grants. Taylor offered the following three tips to other school districts exploring or beginning to implement the Baldrige framework to improve systemwide performance: 1. Adopt continuous improvement at all levels of the organization: "You can gain more traction (sustainability) by implementing throughout all levels instead of just management," said Taylor. "In I-SS, we use PDSA [Plan-Do-Study-Act process improvement method] with five-year-olds." An I-SS classroom display shows an example of sharing improvements with students. Photo used with the permission of Iredell-Statesville Schools. 2. Continually focus on "why we do this" and the positive results: "Help folks understand why you’re doing what you’re doing so you gain more buy-in," stressed Taylor. 3. Engage everyone in improvement efforts: "Start by having different levels identify a problem that they think needs improving. It might not be what senior leadership would see as a problem, but if those at that level of the organization see it as a problem to address and can be a part of the solution, they’re more apt to buy in later on," Taylor noted. Taylor will be sharing best practices used in her district at the Baldrige Program’s annual Quest for Excellence® conference in April. She encourages educators and others to "come see and learn how the PDSA cycle is utilized by teachers at the classroom level to engage students, increase learning, and drive instructional improvement." To learn from this and other sessions featuring role-model Baldrige Award recipients sharing best practices, register for the Quest for Excellence, April 12-15, in Baltimore, MD.

Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon Before you read further, get your tissues out. I have had many memorable moments over the years at Quest for Excellence conferences. And I have never left an annual conference without some immediate action items and feeling inspired that excellence is achievable in every type of organization. But there is one experience that has stood out over the years. Let me share the experience and then the impact it had on me. The year was 1993 and Graniterock, a 100-year old, family-owned construction materials provider in Watsonville, CA, was one of the Baldrige Award’s most recent recipients, in the small business category. It was in the session on Workforce Focus, where a concrete truck driver was the presenter for Graniterock. In those days it was an unusual choice, since the head of Human Resources was the typical presenter. The driver relayed the experience he had negotiating his annual performance agreement a year earlier. Being a small company, all employees discussed their performance plans with Bruce Woolpert, the company’s CEO. Our presenter had been avoiding Bruce because he had not had the time to draft his performance plan for the year. Growing impatient, Bruce finally said we are going to meet today, draft your plan. The driver could not draft his plan. In previous year’s his wife had helped him and he had not gotten to discussing it with her. When he arrived in Bruce’s office, with a blank plan, (Get those tissues ready!) he had to admit to never having learned to read or write. Bruce then took it upon himself to get tutoring, in an adult environment, for the driver. After assessment, it turned out he had undiagnosed dyslexia. It was now a year later at the Quest for Excellence conference with hundreds of people in the room and he was reading a speech he had written about his own journey of learning and about Granterock’s and its leadership’s commitment to employees. There was not a dry eye in the room as he received a standing ovation. By the way, he was now working on getting a private pilot’s license! One of the three basic tenets behind the Baldrige Framework is a commitment to organizational and personal learning. Why? Because we have learned from role model organizations that ongoing learning is a key to employee motivation and engagement, and they, in turn, are drivers of organizational success. While organizations still think of compensation as the primary employee motivator, we have learned the greater power of ongoing opportunities to learn and the benefits of a simple thank you from a supervisor or leader. Fair compensation is important, but the non-monetary opportunities and recognition are long-term engagement factors. I left that meeting with a renewed and strengthened commitment to my colleagues. We are together with each other for more time each day than most employees and their families. We are a family. We need to treat each other with respect and love. This memory has guided my actions for the more than 20 years. Do you want to be inspired? Do you want to hear from motivational leaders? Do you want to witness the power of an engaged workforce? Join us in April for the 27th Annual Quest for Excellence Conference; you will be better informed and glad you came!

Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon Given the challenge, I can relate any three topics to each other! However, in the case of change management, social media, and CEO’s, there is a strong relationship that is reinforced by concepts in the Baldrige Excellence Framework.  Two studies  by Leslie Gaines-Roth et al. of Weber Shandwick, a leading global public relations agency, caused me to think about these linkages. First, let me briefly summarize the Weber Shandwick studies’ findings. The most recent research found that eight out of every 10 CEO’s are now engaged on-line and in the use of social media. This is more than double the percentage in 2010 (36%) when Weber Shandwick first started tracking the social media activity of CEO’s. Company websites are the primary driver of CEO social media use, with 68% of CEO’s engaging through those sites. A prior study by Weber Shandwick indicated while social media presence had once been considered risky for a CEO, it now was more important for CEO’s to use social media to transparently tell the company’s story.  According to the study, social presence shows that a leader is willing to listen, open to engaging in dialogue with stakeholders, and comfortable with change. The Baldrige criteria first included questions about use of social media in the 2013-2014 edition. We stated that one of the four purposes for using social media was to engage employees with each other and with the organization’s leaders. In the Leadership Category, the criteria ask how senior leaders communicate with the entire workforce and key customers to encourage two-way communication, including through the use of social media. In the 2015-2016 revision of the Baldrige criteria, one of the key themes for the revision is the ability to manage (implement, deploy, and sustain) significant organizational change. Organizational change management is a leadership induced process that involves transformational organizational change that leadership controls and sustains. It requires leadership dedication, involvement of employees at all levels, and constant communication. Transformational change is strategy-driven and stems from the top of the organization. With organizational rumors, hearsay, and second-hand messages traveling at the speed of electrons, and organizational change generally triggering uncertainty and anxiety, senior leaders must communicate constantly and faster than the rumor mill and reinterpreted messages to build trust and ensure accuracy and transparency of decisions, progress, and impacts. This transparency and trust builds the full organizational engagement that is necessary for transformational change to succeed. When a senior leader engages in the use of social media to transmit messages in a timely manner, this becomes an accepted and valuable way to share information and receive widespread feedback, critical to the success of change efforts. Thus CEO use of social media becomes an extremely important resource in gaining buy-in and success of organizational change initiatives. While I am not announcing any transformational change in this blog posting, I invite your feedback and support for the social media communications from the Baldrige Program!

Posted by Christine Schaefer Following is an interview with Baldrige alumnus examiner Christopher E. Laxton, executive director of AMDA-The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine (formerly the American Medical Directors Association). Laxton compares the Baldrige Excellence Framework (which includes the Health Care Criteria for Performance Excellence) to two other approaches used in his sector today to improve the performance of post-acute and long-term care organizations: Quality Assurance and Performance Improvement (QAPI) and Advancing Excellence in America’s Nursing Homes Campaign (AE). Christopher Laxton, CAE Tell us about recent developments in your industry and how those impact the focus on improving the performance of care-providing organizations. I work in post-acute and long-term care. This sub-sector of the health care field has gained a great deal of visibility and importance lately as many Baby Boomers move into retirement—by some estimates (Pew, AARP) at the rate of some 10,000 a day for the next 18 years. It is not surprising, therefore, that those who work in this sector and its federal and state regulators are looking for ways to improve the performance of post-acute and long-term care (PA/LTC) provider organizations. The Baldrige Excellence Framework is a helpful guide for organizations that are pursuing performance improvement. At the same time, there are other performance-improvement approaches in use across the multiple sectors of the U.S. economy. For PA/LTC organizations, two programs that have become more prominent because of their systems approach (like that of the Baldrige framework) to performance improvement are (1) AE, which comes from the provider side of this industry; and QAPI, which comes from the main federal payer and regulatory agency: the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services (CMS). Would you please explain first how QAPI is similar to the Baldrige framework and approach? Yes. I think it is useful to look at how the QAPI and AE programs align to the Baldrige framework, both to understand their many points of connection to Baldrige Criteria categories, as well as to discern what may not be explicit in them. The CMS’s QAPI program was introduced in 2013 for nursing homes to voluntarily adopt a systems approach to improvement (http://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Provider-Enrollment-and-Certification/QAPI/nhqapi.html). The program describes QAPI as "the merger of two complementary approaches to quality management, Quality Assurance (QA) and Performance Improvement (PI). QA and PI combine to form QAPI, a comprehensive approach to ensuring high quality care." QAPI is defined as having five elements (see Figure 1): Design and Scope; Governance and Leadership; Feedback, Data Systems and Monitoring; Performance Improvement Projects; and Systematic Analysis and Systemic Action. These will be familiar to those organizations using the Baldrige approach to improve, since they align relatively well with 2015-2016 Baldrige Criteria categories: QAPI’s "Design and Scope" element relates to Baldrige Criteria category 2, "Strategy"; QAPI’s "Governance and Leadership" relates to Baldrige Criteria category 1, " Leadership"; QAPI’s "Feedback, Data Systems and Monitoring" relates to Baldrige Criteria category 4, "Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management"; and QAPI’s "Systematic Analysis and Systemic Action, and Performance Improvement Projects" relates to Baldrige Criteria category 6, "Operations." Figure 1: QAPI’s Five Elements The five QAPI elements have open, non-prescriptive definitions and guidance for applying them. This is comparable to the Baldrige framework’s approach of asking questions rather than dictating particular solutions, based on the understanding that there is no "one-size-fits-all" solution to organizational excellence. This is especially true in the PA/LTC sector, where—despite years of organizational improvement efforts and extensive regulatory oversight—there is wide variability in provider size, scope, capacity, and quality. Next, would you please tell us about the AE program and how it compares to the Baldrige framework? Of course. Advancing Excellence (AE) was founded in 2006 by a coalition of 28 organizations that included nursing home providers, quality improvement experts, and government agencies (https://www.nhqualitycampaign.org/). The Campaign now includes more than 62 percent of the nation’s nursing homes and has a local presence in every state and the District of Columbia through a network of participants called Local Area Networks for Excellence (LANEs). AE has identified nine quality goals (see Figure 2) that describe areas of key importance to good nursing home care that are often challenging for providers. Those areas are where it is likely that nursing homes will find opportunities for improvement, to use a Baldrige term. The AE goals are organized into two groups that will sound very familiar to Baldrige framework users: four organizational goals, which are process-focused; and five clinical outcome goals, which are results-focused. The nine AE goals align the Baldrige Criteria in the following ways: AE’s Consistent Assignment goal is a Baldrige Criteria category 5 ("Workforce") goal, as is AE’s Staff Stability goal. AE’s Hospitalizations goal aligns with Baldrige Criteria category 6 ("Operations"), since it principally relates to item 6.1 (on work processes). AE’s Person-Centered Care goal is clearly a Baldrige Criteria category 3 ("Customers") goal. And AE’s five Clinical Outcomes goals (Infections, Medications, Mobility, Pain, and Pressure Ulcers) are all Baldrige Criteria category 7 ("Results") goals, though they each have process elements that are relevant to Baldrige Criteria categories 4 and 6. Figure 2: Advancing Excellence’s Nine Goals The AE program also identifies a seven-step process that organizations can adopt to systematically address each goal in their organization (see Figure 3). These seven steps have some alignment with the Baldrige process-evaluation factors (approach, deployment, learning, integration [ADLI]) and, to a lesser extent, the Baldrige results evaluation factors (levels, trends, comparisons, integration [LeTCI]). Figure 3: Advancing Excellence’s Seven Steps With all these similarities, do you see these approaches as competing or complementary with each other? While the CMS QAPI program may resonate with those familiar with the Baldrige framework, I believe it would be a mistake to "choose" one over the other. One reason is that the Baldrige framework is very inclusive—accommodating all varieties of performance improvement tools, such as Plan-Do-Study-Act, Lean, Six Sigma, and so forth. Furthermore, when you line up both the QAPI and AE programs against the Baldrige Criteria (see crosswalk of 2013-2014 Baldrige Criteria to QAPI and AE), a comprehensive performance excellence framework for the PA/LTC sector is revealed. It is well aligned with the Baldrige Criteria categories, and it is specifically focused on the highly complex and challenging organizational and customer/patient/resident environment found in this sector’s care settings. These are not simply academic considerations for how quality might be improved in this important and previously neglected sector of U.S. health care. The demographic shift to an older population in this country and around the world—sometimes referred to as the "Silver Tsunami"—is producing major changes in public policy and rapid and massive shifts in market forces that will have a direct impact on the care and support available to our nation’s elders. What do you believe needs to happen in relation to the Baldrige, QAPI, and AE improvement tools to address the current and coming challenge of caring for more senior citizens? It is a basic principle of organizational excellence that systems produce exactly the results that they are designed to produce—intentional and unintentional. Having worked in the long-term care field for 30 years and having served as a Baldrige examiner for seven, I am inspired by the existence of such powerful frameworks for improvement. Now our long-term care leaders must take up these tools and apply them. Who better to do so than those who know intimately the complexity and challenges facing this sector? If they do not, others—with less commitment and connection to preserving and enhancing the health and well-being of our seniors—are sure to impose changes on us that will be neither of our design nor of our choosing.

Posted by Christine Schaefer In anticipating festivities for the birthday of the United States of America this weekend, you’re probably thinking about fireworks. But for inspiration beyond Independence Day, consider how certain organizations reflect foundational values of the nation and its drive for excellence. I’m referring to the high-performing organizations in every sector of the U.S. economy that have received (or are on a path to receive) a Baldrige Award. Consider how such organizations’ commitment to continuously raise performance levels reflects a longstanding element of the American ethos: the willingness to work hard to pursue a better life. Consider that Baldrige Award recipients must demonstrate effective and ethical leadership and governance, a well-executed strategy, well-integrated use and management of knowledge and information, innovative and efficient operations, and favorable and improving results. (As Baldrige geeks know, those relate to requirements in categories 1, 2, 4, 6, and 7, respectively, of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence.) Looking deeper, consider that the award recipients have adopted—as one of nearly a dozen core values of the Baldrige Excellence Framework—a commitment to valuing people. Consider, too, that the honored organizations have demonstrated a focus on supporting customers, community members, and employees alike (categories 3 and 5 of the Baldrige Criteria). And that their strong focus on customers, key communities, and workforce members is manifest in systematic work processes and trended results. In pursuing and proving excellence in all areas of the comprehensive Baldrige framework, the 99 recipients to date of the prestigious award honor the legacy of the nation’s founders and earliest settlers in striving to create a better country for their families and future descendants. The Baldrige Award recipients also reflect ideals of generations of immigrants since July 4, 1776, as they too have contributed their labor, ingenuity, and drive for improvement to better U.S. industries, institutions, and communities. Since the Baldrige Award is a Presidential honor, consider the following statements of the past three U.S. Presidents who have linked the achievements of Baldrige Award recipients to the nation’s drive for excellence: "The road to greatness in America has been, and always will be, traveled by those who embrace change and work hard every day to be the best; the organizations we honor today with the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award exemplify that spirit," President Obama said. "This year’s recipients have shown how quality, innovation, and an unending quest for excellence help strengthen our nation and brighten the future of all Americans." (Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States) "[The Baldrige Award] is a reminder of things that must never change: the passion for excellence, the drive to innovate, the hard work that goes with any successful enterprise." (George W. Bush, 43rd President of the United States) "The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, which highlights customer satisfaction, workforce empowerment, and increased productivity, has come to symbolize America’s commitment to excellence." (William J. Clinton, 42nd President of the United States)

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey Park Place Lexus Plano, TX In 2005, when Park Place Lexus (PPL) became the first automotive dealership to be named a Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient, it ranked among the country’s top Lexus dealers. And in the four years of applying the Baldrige Criteria, of receiving feedback reports, and leading up to the award, the company’s gross profit had increased by 51.3 percent. At its two locations in Plano and Grapevine, TX, PPL continues to sell and service new and pre-owned Lexus vehicles, as well as sell Lexus parts to the wholesale and retail markets. But the highly competitive automotive market has seen some direct market hits since 2005, so how does PPL ensure its continued performance excellence? According to Jamie Capehart, Performance Improvement Specialist at Park Place Lexus, success, in part, comes from a focus on the workforce. At both upcoming regional Baldrige conferences in Nashville, TN, and Denver, CO, Capehart will be sharing the importance of a workforce focus, especially in a competitive industry. In a virtual interview, Capehart previewed her upcoming presentation: Why has a focus on the workforce been important to your success?   Our employees (which we call "Members") are central to our success. We attribute our growth and ability to retain our Members in a highly competitive market to our hiring philosophy-putting the right people in the right jobs-and our commitment to the development of our Members. What are your top tips (e.g., three to five suggested practices) for using Baldrige to support  a workforce focus across an organization? Hire for your culture Apply a systematic, meaningful approach for onboarding and training new Members Utilize a learning management system to manage and track learning Plan for growth through a systematic succession planning process What are a few key reasons that organizations in your sector can benefit from using the Baldrige Excellence Framework? To maintain a balanced focus on all contributing success factors To remain innovative and stay ahead of the competition To ensure that you have the most skilled workforce in the industry What else might participants learn about at your conference session?  Our team structure Performance improvement methodology Member engagement methodologies Development methodologies Strategic planning process Growth since 2005 How our workforce supports innovation Join us at the 2015 Baldrige Regional Conferences to attend this session and many more from current and former Baldrige Award recipients.

By Christine Schaefer Pal’s Sudden Service received the Baldrige Award in 2001. Since then, the quick-service restaurant chain’s founder, Pal Barger, has repeatedly shared why he considers his company’s heavy investment in employee training to be cost-effective—despite high turnover in the industry. Other business leaders reportedly ask Pal, "What if you spend all this time and money training someone and then they leave?’" His response to them: "Suppose we don’t, and then they stay?" Over the past 15 years, an extraordinary commitment to customer-focused excellence and workforce development has continued to benefit Pal’s Sudden Service. The 27-restaurant chain based in Kingsport, Tennessee, has received wide attention and recognition for both its strong customer focus and uncommon practices in educating employees. A profile of the company published last November in The Washington Post described the "secret sauce" for Pal’s success: Noting that Pal’s inventory turned over 143 times a year, compared to an industry average of 27, the authors of the article attributed Pal’s high productivity to streamlined work processes designed around "laser-like intensity on one thing: the customer." In April 2014, when Inc. Magazine named Pal’s to its list of "25 Most Audacious Companies," it reported that Pal’s senior leaders and managers each spend 10 percent of their time daily training employees. David McClaskey (far left) in Pal’s BEI training room The training Pal’s Sudden Service provides its workers goes beyond standard practices to cultivate behavioral traits for them to become future leaders—in the same or other businesses. And the company offers training to leaders and employees of other organizations too: the Kingsport-based training center of Pal’s Business Excellence Institute (BEI) regularly provides classes to help organizations in its community and globally improve their performance. Pal’s BEI was created as a systematic mechanism for Pal’s Sudden Service to carry out its responsibility as a Baldrige Award-winning company to share its role-model practices with other companies of all types. "It has been supporting the Malcom Baldrige National Quality Award’s mission by systematically inspiring and enabling other organizations to learn and immediately apply simple and effective performance-excellence practices since 2000," noted David McClaskey, Pal’s co-founder (along with Thom Crosby) and president. "Since 2012, 100 percent of the organizations that have attended have applied one or more practices they learned within four weeks of taking a class," said McClaskey. For example, in August, school-nutrition employees of the Kingsport City (TN) Schools received customer-service training from Pal’s instructors at the facility. "They are now busy applying what they have learned," he added. Pal’s BEI training center Pal’s BEI is "a full-time operation providing training and consulting based on Pal’s role-model performance-excellence principles and practices," said David Jones, the institute’s vice president. "We train over 700 per year from around the world in our Kingsport training center," said Jones. "Our reach extends to thousands more [in our role] as speakers at conferences and workshop leaders. About 50 percent of our clients are restaurants; the other 50 percent are from all types and sizes of for-profit and not-for-profit organizations." David Jones (speaking from the right) in Pal’s BEI training room Training at Pal’s BEI covers principles and practices related to the Baldrige Excellence Framework, including the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. "We make it a point to teach that adopting the Baldrige Criteria as a basis for the company’s management and work systems is what took Pal’s from good to great," said Jones. He added, "Pal’s still uses the [Baldrige] Criteria to do internal assessments. So even though you haven’t heard from us on the applicant scene, we are still very much involved and generating even better results today than we did in 2001."

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey Why didn’t Sotheby’s envision e-bay? Why didn’t IBM create the PC operating system? Why did CBS fail to see the value of CNN? Why did GM miss the minivan? Why didn’t AT&T invent AOL? And why didn’t Kodak come to market with digital photos when it had the technology? According to Robert "Rusty" Patterson, chairman and CEO of the National Council for Advanced Manufacturing (NACFAM) and an international speaker on topics such as emerging competitive concepts, the shape of industry in the future, and how to position your organization to be a next generation enterprise, many companies that were once household names have been destroyed because they didn’t have a common culture that was innovative, creative, forward thinking, and conducive to collaboration that could position them for the future. "If you want to have long-term sustainability, you’ve got to have a culture that looks to the future, envisions what it could be," said Patterson. Then "bring in outsiders, bring in other people who can help you see what that vision needs to be. Have a common culture throughout your organization so that everyone knows what their roles are, what roles they can play. This fits right in with the Baldrige Core Values and the whole [Baldrige] process. . . . You’re either going to [create this culture] calling it Baldrige, or you’re going to do it calling it something else. . . . [The Baldrige Program] has got the framework; all [organizations have] got to do . . . is use it, and it will work." The Baldrige Excellence Framework uses a "systems approach," teaching that organizations can achieve that kind of pervasive culture in part through a systems approach to managing and improving their organizations. NACFAM is a manufacturing policy think tank that focuses on policy issues related to sustainable manufacturing, workforce development, technology and innovation, and supply chain optimization. Patterson said that NACFAM’s mission is to strengthen and support  U.S. manufacturing, with value creation and job growth in the sector absolutely essential to a healthy economy. He said the biggest challenge for small and medium manufacturing enterprises today is being able to innovate quick enough. "It used to be that the drivers [for sustainability] were value delivery and reduction of variation at all costs. We had to have efficiency, productivity, process discipline. Back in the ’80s and ’90s, we got fairly good at that, but we missed out on the part, I think, that the Baldrige Criteria help with, which is creating a culture that is not just a set a tools to make changes—it’s actually a culture of how you do business and how you work and what you value." He noted that Baldrige has a set of Core Values, other companies may have principles that they follow. One important lesson from decades past, he said, is that you can have a toolbox and fix everything, but you need to establish a culture with common, shared values to make those changes last. "You’ve got to have innovative, creative thinking because [the market] is moving at such a pace. . . . You’ve got to think outside of the box, but at the same time, you’ve got to have a culture and core values. If you’ve got that, you can introduce new things. And people know how to approach them. They don’t go out and just blindly follow a process. They know how to approach [a process/new idea], analyze it. They know how to put scientific data around it; make sure it’s doing what they want it to do." Collaboration is also critical for businesses today, he said; "your delivery [of products to the market] is just the admission ticket to the competitive environment. Collaboration and innovation are now the discriminators in that environment. Being able to act like you’re a bigger company because you’ve got partners, you’ve got a network. . . . [Through collaboration with universities, other companies, etc., you can] produce things that separately might take years to do; together they can do it in less [time, with less resources]." Patterson learned the hard way about the difficulties of not having a common culture and core values through his experience with a large merger in the defense industry. Multiple companies were brought together, but the new workforce had different vantage points. "We were in a situation where we realized we couldn’t even figure out how to go and improve something because we each did [it differently. Eventually] we created a common culture, but it was out of necessity, and it was forced on us." He added, "I believe most people want to do a good job . . . but if you don’t have that common culture then it’s hard to ever pull that off. I’ve done a lot of improvement activities in my career in different facilities where the CEO was detached from what was going on. He would say . . . just go fix that, but those fixes don’t last. . . . You can get some results immediately, but two-three years later, they’re starting to fall off and go away because there’s no supporting mechanism." Regarding the Baldrige Excellence Framework and its Criteria, Patterson said he has been surprised and pleased at how the Baldrige Criteria "morphed" the way they did, with an increased focus on core values rather than just on process discipline. "It’s not just about how well you execute what you’re doing. It’s about how you create the culture that continues to execute no matter the process. And it’s everything from the CEO to the janitor who understands how to approach issues and problems, understands how to approach their work, and has appreciation for each other’s roles. . . . I was really pleased when I saw that [the Baldrige Criteria have] changed over time and have matured that process and product focus to [an updated framework] that I think has sustainable and long-term, lasting value and can continue to." Patterson, who worked at Texas Instruments, Inc., in 1992 when it received the Baldrige Award, said he was once part of a focus group for medical professionals who were trying to develop technology for the future. "The medical field was interested in the future of dentistry, but they used a bunch of us who were not dentists to tell them what the future was," to provide an outside perspective. "What I tell people is you ought to use the Baldrige Criteria to turn a mirror on yourself. You don’t have to win a Baldrige Award. . . . The real key is that you can put that mirror on yourself and get some examiners to come in and evaluate what you’re doing because sometimes it’s hard for you to do this. It’s an excellent criteria [framework that helps you say] you’re doing a lot of the right things, but here are some areas where you can improve." Patterson’s advice today to manufacturers and other organizations: Stick with early successes, focus on the future, and get a sustainable culture with core values in place. "Our culture here in the United States is to see a problem and go fix it and make [the product/process] better and better and better," Patterson added. "But we never look up to see if the problem is even still out there. . . . Strategic thinking is key in there. Every year, you have to think what does the future look like. And if that’s what the future looks like, what are the attributes we have to have to succeed in that future. . . . You don’t want to be focused on your market. You want to be focused on the future and what markets are out there and see what parts you can play in them."