Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey For twenty five years, the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program has been associated primarily with the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, but Baldrige is so much more than just an award. Many organizations are simply not ready now or may have no interest ever in applying for a Baldrige Award. They embrace an improvement mindset but want to focus on one aspect of their business or one product line or one work system or one challenge, etc. They don’t want to embark on a long improvement journey; they want to realize an improvement now. These organizations might be interested in using the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence for incremental or even small improvements that would make a big difference for their customers and other stakeholders. And that’s one of the beauties of the Criteria-it’s divided into categories, which are divided into items. Those items have basic requirements, overall requirements, and areas to address with multiple requirements. Whether the organization has just started improvement strategies or is well along its performance excellence path, it can focus on a high-level (basic requirement) or in-depth (multiple requirement) area of the Criteria that fits how or what it hopes to improve-without embarking on a long improvement journey. That said, enter the Baldrige Collaborative Assessment, a Baldrige service introduced last year, to help an organization accelerate the improvement of its key processes or customized to focus on a specific organizational priority. A Baldrige examiner team, working directly, face-to-face with the organization’s staff members, identifies the organizations strengths and opportunities for improvement using the Criteria-at the level where the organization would like to focus. The assessment has no connection to the Baldrige Award, which eliminates any competitiveness or tension when the examiner team comes to visit. Organizational key themes are developed collaboratively that represent the the critical few findings-both key strengths to be leveraged and opportunities for improvement that, if acted on, could have significant impact on organizational performance. Key themes and detailed recommendations are discussed in real-time during a presentation while the examiner team is still on-site. A follow-up feedback report contains more information on the recommendations, presented by Baldrige Criteria category, that the organization’s staff members found to be most important to address.  The follow-up feedback report also contains those recommendations that the organization staff members felt were valuable to act on but would have less impact and could wait until some future time for action. Finally, in the feedback report are references to award application summaries from recent Baldrige national award recipients who have excelled in particular Criteria items. These references are not intended to prescribe or even suggest practices that would work for the organization; rather, they are intended to spark ideas. And that’s the whole point of the Baldrige Collaborative Assessment. There is no application or intense focus on an improvement journey that the organization may not desire at the current time. There is simply a desire to improve and to work collaboratively with trained Baldrige experts on what you hope to improve. No journey required.

Posted by Christine Schaefer How is the Baldrige framework for performance excellence helping manufacturing companies today? Consider the experience of Seagate Technology, a manufacturer that defines itself as a "world leader in hard disk drives and storage solutions." The company, which employs 55,000 workers at sites around the world, reported revenue of $14.4 billion in the fiscal year that ended in June 2013. I recently interviewed Dave Brucks, a Baldrige Executive Fellow who is the executive director of Seagate’s Functional Excellence program. As shared below, he described his company’s use of Baldrige resources in recent years to broadly improve the company’s performance. What drew you to participate in the Baldrige Executive Fellows Program and how might your company benefit? I learned of the Baldrige Executive Fellows program through the Performance Excellence Network, the regional Baldrige program here in Minnesota. I have been reaching out to other organizations to learn how they started their "performance excellence journey," so the Fellows program is a great opportunity to interact with senior leaders of other organizations and learn from them. At the QE [Quest for Excellence®] conference, being in the Fellows program was like having a VIP backstage pass to the [best-practice-sharing] event. The site visits to award-winning organizations are what really attracted me to the program. We had been studying award-winning applications to learn about best practices prior to my involvement in the Fellows program. A site visit, however, really brings the application to life for me. Seagate will benefit from bringing some of the best practices and processes from high-performing organizations and applying them to the work at Seagate. We’ve used some of the best practices already, for example, in how we manage customer complaints. I was able to pen characteristics of good customer complaint processes from [Baldrige Award-winning] hospitals, restaurants, and other manufacturers. We created spreadsheets of Baldrige Award winners’ practices; and improvement teams throughout the organization use this information  in their areas. This has been a very valuable resource for people [within the organization] who know nothing about Baldrige. What are some of your key learnings so far about the Baldrige framework and/or organizations that have used this framework? Have your perceptions changed as you are learning more about Baldrige as a Fellow? The fascinating thing for me is how the Criteria can be applied in so many different types of organizations to help them improve. Seagate first started to look into using the Baldrige Criteria about 18 months ago. As I learned more about the Criteria, I got more and more excited about its potential for helping Seagate improve in all areas of our business. As we do site visits with the Fellows program, it becomes obvious that these award-winning organizations use the Baldrige Criteria every day in how they run their businesses. They don’t have "people doing Baldrige" or spend time doing Baldrige separate from running their business. Baldrige core values, concepts, and the Criteria for Performance Excellence framework are integrated into their business model and demonstrated on a daily basis by their people. Tell us about the Baldrige-based program you are setting up at Seagate. The [Functional Excellence] program we are setting up at Seagate moves us beyond a compliance model to a performance excellence model. Seagate has been ISO-certified for 15+ years. This has given the company a really good quality management system foundation to build on. We want to move beyond these requirements, and the Baldrige Criteria provides a great framework to raise expectations in all areas of our business. Two of Seagate’s locations were selected as pilot sites to develop the Functional Excellence process before it was expanded to other Seagate locations worldwide. A five-step process has been defined for Seagate sites and organizations to follow. The development of an Organizational Profile has been a great starting point for the process. It has helped to align the leadership on what is important to the organization (vision, mission, customers, strategic advantages/challenges, competitive position, etc.) and has them quickly thinking about areas of improvement. We have used a Baldrige survey as an assessment tool at two of our sites. This has helped focus them on highest-priority improvement opportunity areas and get them quickly moving on improvement action plans. Another Seagate pilot site took the narrative approach to assessment as we are trying to build in flexibility to the process to make it work for all of our sites worldwide. Based on my learning from the Fellows program, we have aspirations to put a model in place similar to those of organizations such as Cargill and Tata. Both of these organizations have really strong internal assessment processes based on the Baldrige Criteria. Our journey to get to this type of process has just started!     What do you see as the key challenges for companies that are new to the Baldrige Criteria, and how do you think these might be overcome? One of the key challenges is how to get started. The good news is there are many resources available through the state, regional, and national programs that help. Everyone I have contacted at an award-winning organization has been extremely helpful in answering the many questions I have on the process. Another key is to get people involved as evaluators/examiners to learn the assessment process and Criteria. When we started using Baldrige at Seagate, some people had the perception that it was a lot of paperwork—a lot of administrative work—not resources that focus us on getting better. Another key challenge for Seagate is integrating the Functional Excellence effort into other company initiatives. Seagate already has a knowledge base on business excellence tools such as Six Sigma, Design for Six Sigma, Lean, and 8D problem solving. It is a challenge to show members of the organization how these all work together and that Functional Excellence doesn’t replace these but, rather, is a way to tie these all together in a systems view. The Criteria framework pulls [other performance improvement tools and efforts] all together. When we did our ISO audit, people viewed it only as a quality system check. But the Baldrige framework is more comprehensive and includes all aspects of the business, including HR and finance. Hearing the stories of award-winning organizations [as a Baldrige Fellow] is wonderful; yet, at the same time, it’s somewhat intimidating when you hear how long most of them have been using the Criteria. Showing how an organization can identify some quick wins and make significant changes quickly using the Criteria as its basis can help build momentum for organizations just starting their journey. We’ve made a lot of progress in one short year—it doesn’t take 10 or 15 years to make progress; we made significant progress in just one year in talking about our Organizational Profile. What do you see as the key benefits of the Baldrige Criteria? One of the biggest benefits that I have observed at Seagate is that it has broadened the scope of organizations that we look at to benchmark and learn from. Being a high-tech manufacturing company in an industry where there are only three main competitors, Seagate has a tendency to only look at our competitors in order to benchmark processes against them. The common language that the Baldrige framework provides allows Seagate to learn from health care, education, nonprofit organizations, and small businesses, too. Assessments with the Baldrige Criteria also do a nice job of highlighting the issues that the senior leaders of the organization need to focus on to have successful customer relationships. Compliance audits focused on a lot of basics that need to be attended to but infrequently captured findings that related to issues that were on the minds of senior leaders. I can see how using the framework really helps to "align the arrows." The Criteria facilitates developing a common understanding of goals, processes, and results in the organization and having people align their work and energy toward doing these in the best way possible. Other thoughts about use of Baldrige in manufacturing today? As I did research on the Baldrige Program at the start of Seagate’s effort, I was surprised to see that there were not a lot of manufacturing or high-tech organizations using the Criteria. I  hope that Seagate’s involvement and sharing of our journey will inspire other high-tech and manufacturing organizations to use Baldrige as their performance excellence model. A lot of people don’t yet know it’s more than an award. We look at it as a tool that we use, along with other tools, for continuous improvement. For more on the value of the Baldrige Criteria in manufacturing, see "Saving Manufacturing Jobs: A Systems Perspective (aka the Baldrige Approach" and "Manufacturing Excellence: Guess What These Companies Have in Common?" For information on the second annual Manufacturing Day, an initiative of NIST’s Manufacturing Extension Program that encompasses factory tours and other events across the country on October 4 to promote manufacturing in America, see http://www.mfgday.com/.   

Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon Last week we had our third meeting of the 2013 cohort of Baldrige Executive Fellows. I always find the interactions at these meetings to be extremely stimulating and I look forward to the next interaction as soon as the meeting ends. The Fellows learn from executives at Baldrige Award recipients and from each other; a tremendous learning opportunity for them and for all of us privileged to work with the Fellows. Last week’s meeting was hosted by Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital (Good Sam), a 2010 Health Care category recipient. I want to share with you a simple, but powerful, message Pattie Skriba, Good Sam’s VP for Learning and Organizational Effectiveness, shared — their six key steps to organizational transformation (or as they refer to it going from good to great): Establish an inspiring vision. Enroll leaders in the vision and create ownership. Create alignment and transparency to support the vision. Deploy evidence-based practices. Establish a systematic leadership process. Build loyal relationships with stakeholders. I was struck by two things as I looked at the list. The first is how logical this list is in concept and yet how hard it is to put into practice. The second thing that struck me is the  overlap with Baldrige core values and concepts: visionary leadership, customer-driven excellence, valuing workforce members and partners, focus on the future, management by fact, and systems perspective. While the "Baldrige six" don’t have a one-for-one match with the "Good Sam six," in aggregate they sure do form a twelve-pack of powerful messages to any senior leadership team looking at organizational transformation. So here’s my list of six things to do with this blog if you want to get better faster: Share it with your senior leadership team. Challenge them to act on it. Determine how you will measure progress. Deploy, align, and show commitment. Communicate, communicate, communicate. Don’t give up! Your organization will be better for accepting your suggestion. Thanks and let me know how it goes.

Posted by Christine Schaefer In a recent article published by Manufacturing Business Technology, Dr. Luis Calingo, a veteran Baldrige examiner and current president of Woodbury University, spoke of the great benefits of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence to the manufacturing sector today. In a follow-up interview, he offered the following additional insights. The title of the Manufacturing Business Technology article suggests that the Baldrige Criteria can provide a more valuable management tool than ISO 14000 for manufacturers. Would you please explain the comparative benefits? Thank you for this question as the statement in the Manufacturing Business Technology article did not fully capture my sentiments. The popularity of the ISO family of standards has accelerated whenever customers make certification to such standards a requirement for their suppliers, which has indeed been the case. While the ISO standards are mandatory customer requirements, the Baldrige framework is a voluntary roadmap to organizational excellence. When business leaders hear "Baldrige," they think that adopting [the Criteria] will require a lot of work and that they will need to hire consultants on how to use the Criteria. This reminds me of what a guru has written about the nature of work: Work is expending effort on things we don’t want to do. Passion is expending energy on things we love to do. The goal is to do no work.  Baldrige is about the pursuit of excellence, and isn’t that the goal of every CEO? If CEOs really understand Baldrige, they will see it as a natural part of what they would love to do anyway. Manufacturers are continually bombarded with tools and certification systems (such as ISO 9000 for quality management systems, ISO 14000 for environmental management systems, OSHAS 18000 for workforce health and safety, SA 8000 for social accountability, ISO 27000 for information security management systems); to a large extent, those have gained in popularity because they are customer requirements, that is, requirements of customers for their suppliers. All of these certification schemes may be useful in areas where they address specific opportunities for improvement. The Baldrige framework, on the other hand, focuses on the entire organization as a system of purpose, processes, and outcomes. My suggestion to manufacturers is to pursue those certifications under the umbrella of performance excellence [using the Baldrige framework] so as to avoid the dangers of sub-optimization. Operationally, what that means is that a business should first conduct a Baldrige-based self-assessment—not necessarily the full-blown application for the Baldrige Award or state-level award, but rather, questionnaire-based assessments such as Are We Making Progress? so that they can identify their opportunities for improvement (OFIs) first, and based on those, then determine which certification schemes will be most useful, for example, for OFIs in quality management, ISO 9000; if health and safety issues are present, OSHAS 18000; and so forth. You have spoken of the perception among some business leaders today that the Baldrige Award may be rooted in outdated concepts. How would you recommend that those who are familiar with the evolution of the Baldrige Program and the iterative nature of the Criteria for Performance Excellence speak to this point? There is, indeed, the perception that the Baldrige Award may be rooted in outdated concepts like Total Quality Management, although I am quite certain that business executives would agree that quality is important. As an educator myself, I’ve seen how management thought has evolved through the centuries, producing enduring concepts. For example, the earliest known reference to product quality dates back to the Code of Hammurabi (1772 B.C.): "The mason who builds a house which falls down and kills the inmate shall be put to death." I believe that the root cause of this perception problem is that, culturally, Americans tend to have a shorter time orientation or attention span. One way to overcome this is to have more schools, particularly business schools, teach Baldrige concepts as part of their curricula. Dr. Luis Calingo I have done volunteer work in other countries such as the Philippines and Thailand helping them build their Baldrige-based national quality award programs, and there is no shortage of manufacturers applying for their quality awards. Their governments have been able to link their award programs to their national action agenda for improving productivity and competitiveness. It is very important for businesses to see that the Baldrige program is part of a larger program to create more jobs and increase the quality of life of all Americans. Tell us more about how you believe the Baldrige Award helps build accountability of businesses to their customers and employees through performance measurement. At the risk of oversimplification, first and foremost, the Baldrige Criteria require that senior leaders listen to their customers and formulate a strategy that addresses, among others, the needs and expectations of their customers. Second, the Baldrige Criteria require that that organizational strategy is translated into processes, that there is a sufficient, capable, and engaged workforce and a plan to flawlessly execute those processes, and that there is a performance measurement system that enables the leadership to track their collective success in achieving intended outcomes. In short, the Baldrige Criteria encompass a total system of accountability that is applicable to a wide range of organizations. In fact, we’re using Baldrige in my university without calling it that—maybe when we’ve got all our processes lined up and results to show, we’ll apply for the California Awards for Performance Excellence and, eventually, the Baldrige Award. At risk of sounding prescriptive, I recommend that all manufacturers have a balanced scorecard, which translates their visions of their future into goals and eventually strategic initiatives and action plans. The scorecard provides a foundation that enables senior leaders to adopt the Baldrige Criteria as a roadmap for sustainable performance excellence and, at the same time, guiding them to the appropriate tools and certification schemes (such as the ISO standards) that will help them address their opportunities for improvement.  

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey What’s in an organizational award? It might be motivation for your employees. It might be proof to your customers that you care about excellence. It might be a signal to your suppliers that you expect only the best. It might help you in pursuing complementary credentials (such as accreditation or ISO certification, depending on your sector) or be the next step after Magnet recognition. It might help you prove your own qualifications to a parent organization, accreditor, or other contracting body. "We hope receiving this award demonstrates to [our customers] just how much we care about our organization and theirs," said Terry May, president of MESA, upon receiving the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. "We know now that we wouldn’t be the organization we are today without [Baldrige]. You helped us become a world-class organization, and for that we thank you." There are lots of awards out there: best this, most that. The application criteria might be specific to one industry like human resources or information technology or might be something for which the organization can be nominated. But the nation’s highest and only Presidential award for organizational excellence remains the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. The Criteria for Performance Excellence, which are the application for the Baldrige Award, are complex but truly robust and filled with value. Applying for the Baldrige Award is not just a competition to prove your excellence but to help you improve in general; some organizations never apply for the award but find great value in using the Criteria to improve. James Berry, president of Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, said, "Baldrige sustains and maintains a succession of learning; a model to stay out front of constant change. . . . The Baldrige process has revelations in it. If you’ve been in a  business for a long time, another set of eyes [Baldrige examiner assessment] can literally shock you by pointing out what you’ve missed." "It’s not easy to win [the Baldrige Award], but it’s not about the award. It’s about the growth, the continuous improvement, the journey—no small task but it’s worth it," added Bruce Kintz, president of Concordia Publishing House. What about your organization? Is it ready to (Im)Prove?

Posted by Christine Schaefer Recognizing excellence is a critical component of the mission of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program. That is what the Baldrige Award is all about! Today I’m writing to remind organizations advancing on their journey toward excellence of an additional form of national recognition now offered through the annual Baldrige Award process: Category Best Practices. All organizations selected by the Panel of Judges this coming November for such recognition will have received a site visit as part of the 2013 Baldrige Award process and will have demonstrated outstanding practices in one or more of the first six categories of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. Through last year’s national award process, the following three organizations were selected and honored for outstanding practices in two Criteria categories each (as shown below): Maury Regional Medical Center, Columbia, TN: Strategic Planning, Workforce Focus Northwest Vista College, San Antonio, TX: Leadership, Customer Focus PricewaterhouseCoopers Public Sector Practice, McLean, VA: Leadership, Workforce Focus The Baldrige Program introduced category-level recognition in 2012 to encourage organizations to continue on their journey to excellence. The intent was also to ensure that useful best practices of award finalists (site-visited organizations) would not be missed by other organizations on the journey. The three organizations honored in 2012 each shared practices in their recognized categories at a panel session of the 25th Annual Quest for Excellence conference. Are you considering whether to apply for a Baldrige Award in the future? Or is your organization in early stages of an improvement journey and looking for inspiration from those that may be farther along on the road to excellence? If so, keep in mind that the Baldrige Award process now offers this additional means of celebrating and sharing excellence.    

I am an introvert; INTJ for those who admire Myers-Briggs indicators. I remember being particularly pleased a few years ago when I read an HBR article that extolled the virtues of introverts as effective leaders. The article stated conventional wisdom and a decade of academic research concluded that extroverts make the best leaders. However, the article continued with an experiment with college students folding T-shirts. Groups with proactive followers and an introverted leader folded on average 28% more T-shirts. That made me feel good! Very recently, a blog posting in the Business Management Daily talked about Donald Keough, the former president of Coca-Cola. He, like many senior executives, made clear-cut decisions, even if he sometimes was too snappy in his judgments. In 1989, soon after the Berlin Wall came down, he was approached by his head of German operations with a proposal to build a $500 million bottling facility in the former East Germany. Keough decided on the spot that the investment was too high and cut the head of German operations presentation off.  Subsequently, Keough was informed that the head of German operations wanted to resign; he felt slighted by Keough because his proposal did not receive fair evaluation. Duly chastised, Keough agreed to visit East Germany and reconsider the proposal. Subsequently, he decided to invest $1 billion in East Germany and eastern Europe. It ended up with huge profits for Coca-Cola. And Keough learned to listen to his management team more effectively. Keough had learned a key component of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence requirements for effective senior leadership: frank, two-way communication. Closely related to this communication is participation in the development of future organizational leaders, which requires open communication. The Baldrige Criteria strategic planning category asks about your process for identifying potential blind spots and strategic opportunities. Keough was fortunate that his being chastised led to the implementation of a significant strategic opportunity. But was this the best process for getting there? To see what else role model senior leaders should consider, see item 1.1 on senior leadership in the Baldrige Criteria. How do your senior leaders or you as a senior leader measure up?

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey  If you are reading this, then you must care about continuous improvement, performance excellence, and of course quality. If this is true, than please join us in celebrating that passion for quality-and learn from some case studies, research, and tools, too. ASQ is sponsoring world quality month by providing a platform for acknowledging the efforts and accomplishments of quality and all who work to make it happen. The Web site serves as the hub of the celebration and will be continuously updated through December. Anyone can submit quality event details (conferences or smaller, internal events), success stories (print/video), and knowledge resources (case studies, research, quality tools, etc.) and participate in polls and social media discussions. And, if I may suggest, what a great place to share your success with implementing or using the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence as a framework to achieve quality outcomes. Here are a few things that you can do: Participate in the #QualityLasts contest on Twitter. The prize is a Canon PowerShot SX260 HS 12.1 MP CMOS digital camera. Visit the World Quality Month Web site and share your story. Submit internal and/or external events celebrating quality in the months of October or November to worldqualitymonth.org. Also, submit knowledge resources—case studies, best practices, quality tools, success stories, videos, etc.

Posted by Christine Schaefer Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein and others have written about the problem of an excessive and short-sighted focus by many business leaders today on stock values for shareholders. But what about the role of corporate governance boards? Aren’t members of a board of directors obliged to take a longer-term view of company management and performance results? Aren’t they expected to help ensure their organization’s future sustainability, in part by creating and balancing value for all customers and stakeholders? As governance board members of Baldrige Award-winning organizations have affirmed, those boards that embrace the role of ensuring responsible governance and leadership of their organizations are likely to find the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence an essential tool in this endeavor, regardless of the sector or size of the organization. The "Governance and Societal Responsibilities" section of the Criteria (item 1.2) provides a board of directors with self-assessment questions divided into three topic areas: organizational governance, legal and ethical behavior, and societal responsibilities and support of key communities. The first area addresses how the organization achieves accountability for  management actions, fiscal accountability, transparency in operations, independence and effectiveness of audits, protection of stakeholder and stockholder interests, and succession planning for senior leaders. The next questions (also Criteria requirements) guide the board of directors to determine whether it has  an effective approach to leadership performance evaluation and improvement, legal and ethical behavior, fulfillment of responsibilties, and support to key communities. For example, the Criteria ask how the organization considers societal well-being and benefit in its strategy and daily operations—including its contributions to the environmental, social, and economic systems in which the organization resides and from which it benefits. To help boards of directors get started using the Criteria for Performance Excellence, the Baldrige Program has long offered a free resource: A Baldrige Perspective for the Board of Directors (downloadable PDF). Following are ten sample questions (spanning all seven categories of the Criteria for Performance Excellence) that can help a board of directors begin to assess the performance of the organization and target areas for improvement:  How does your organization address risks and anticipate public concerns with its products and operations? (Category 1, Leadership) How does your organization promote and ensure ethical behavior in everything it does? (Category 1, Leadership) How does your organization ensure that its strategic planning addresses long-term sustainability, major shifts in markets or the regulatory environment, and its unique strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats? (Category 2, Strategic Planning) What does your organization do to gain new customers and to build relationships with existing ones; specifically, what does your organization do to increase its customers’ loyalty and encourage them to return? (Category 3, Customer Focus) Is there an effective process in place to review organizational performance and, based on the findings, to prioritize improvements and designate areas for innovations? (Category 4, Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management) Does your organization have a process for career progression for members of your workforce, as well as a succession plan for leadership and management positions; are they effective? (Category 5, Workforce Focus) Does your organization have a systematic approach for designing its processes to meet key requirements (e.g., new technology, cycle time, productivity, and cost control); are there measures (including in-process measures) and a systematic approach for managing and improving these processes? (Category 6, Operations Focus) Does your organization have a process in place to ensure that operations continue if there is an emergency (e.g., a weather-related, local, or national emergency)? (Category 6, Operations Focus) What are your organization’s results for measures of product and process performance that are important to your customers, and how do they compare with the results of competitors or similar organizations? (Category 7, Results) What are your organization’s results for measures of financial and marketplace performance, and how do they compare with the results of competitors or similar organizations? (Category 7, Results) Can your board members and/or your organization’s senior leaders answer these questions? If not, your organization may have gaps requiring your attention. Check out related posts on Blogrige on how to prepare to conduct a Baldrige self-assessment: "Baldrige Self-Assessment: Seven Ways to Get Started" and "Baldrige Self-Assessment: Seven Steps for a Full Examination." And if you serve on the board of directors of a business or nonprofit organization—whether a corporate governance board, a professional association advisory board, or a school board—please continue to share with us how you have used the Baldrige framework to guide the organization to improve its performance and excel.

By Dawn Marie Bailey In the 2013-2014 Criteria for Performance Excellence, innovation is defined as making meaning­ful, discontinuous change to products, processes, or organizational effectiveness in order to create new value for stakeholders. So you might not expect to find an example of such innovation in a traditional industry such as nameplates, where two-time Baldrige-Award-winning Texas Nameplate has been making nameplates that have basically looked the same for almost 70 years. But Dale Crownover, the president/CEO of the family-owned business started by his father, is a self-described "Baldrige practitioner"; innovation and visionary leadership were concepts he knew well. Texas Nameplate has just been awarded a U.S. government patent (#8540285) for a chemically etched QR code for nameplates. The QR code can be scanned by any smart phone and links the customer to the Internet where he/she can find detailed information about the product. The code allows repair crews to instantly access repair manuals while in the field, companies to more efficiently track inventory, users to instantly access safety information, and customers to understand their product with more clarity (no more user errors trying to understand the limited information that can be printed on nameplates). Nameplates can be found on just about every appliance from refrigerators, hot water heaters, air conditioners, and lawn mowers, to big pressure vessels used in the oil and gas industry, and valves and machinery used by the military, to many other uses in many other industries. "If it wasn’t for Baldrige, I would have never thought about [developing the process recognized in the patent]," Crownover says. "Everything that we’ve ever done, we’ve always tried to think of more innovative ways and how to bring more value for our customers’ customers. Baldrige taught me that. . . . Baldrige taught me that no matter what you do, you can do it better. I have a lot of respect for the Criteria and more importantly how it provides visionary considerations for all stakeholders in finding bigger, better ways to do things." In 2007, the Department of Defense requested that the unique identification codes on its products be laser etched into nameplates in order for the product information to be read by scanners. The problem was that the typical etching process is chemically based so that it can be done in batches; laser etching can only be done one at a time-not a very cost-effective method, especially for a small business like Texas Nameplate. Crownover says he had always been bothered that no matter how much Texas Nameplate improved its processes, the resulting product was just about always the same; he said you really can’t tell the difference between a nameplate made by his father 60 years ago and a nameplate made today. So the idea of creating a code on the nameplates that could be scanned was novel and a little risky (who would have thought that someday we would all be walking around with built-in scanners in our smart phones). But Crownover says he thought back to the Baldrige Criteria with their definitions of innovation, visionary leadership, and a focus on the future, and he made a decision that the small business would try to perfect a chemically based process for creating codes that could be read by scanners.  After some research and development and trial and error, it worked; Texas Nameplate applied and was awarded the patent so that it now can create a Digital Nameplate.® Now, if a customer has a question about an appliance, for example, with a Digital Nameplate®, he/she can scan the QR code and instantly tell a technician over the phone the model, type, date bought, brand, specifications, etc. According to the Criteria, innovation results from a supportive environ­ment, a process for identifying strategic opportunities, and the pursuit of those strategic opportunities that you identify as intelligent risks. Achieving innovation requires resource support and the tolerance of failure. Identifying strategic opportunities and intelligent risks is part of strategy, and pursuing the intelligent risks must be embedded in manag­ing organizational operations. Crownover says there was an intelligent risk with this new technology, but the "very engaged workforce" at Texas Nameplate worked as a team in the best interest of the company and of the country. The largest part of the challenge, he said, is that customers have not typically seen nameplates on their products as adding value. "Customers don’t buy nameplates because they think they look cool," Crownover says, "but some government official told them to do it. They see [nameplates] as an expense; we see them as an investment. . . . These nameplates provide value because a product with a QR code can be scanned for safety measures, liability, inventory, ISO standards, and even to prevent counterfeiting (you’d be amazed how many valves are counterfeited overseas). It’s going to provide more access to keep up with the product." To meet this challenge, Crownover says the company is now talking as much with the marketing people among its customers as with the engineers; the marketing folks have tended to be more creative in terms of innovative technology. "It took five years to win the Baldrige Award and five years to get this patent," Crownover says. "Both took a lot of work, a lot of patience, but between the two of them if somebody was to ask which was more satisfying, I couldn’t tell you. . . . Both were well worth it, and we’re excited. This might take off; it might not, but it doesn’t really matter. . . . Getting the patent was like winning the Baldrige Award. It validated that what we were doing was successful." "I get mad at anybody who says [he/she] wants to do Baldrige to win," added Crownover. "[Texas Nameplate follows the Baldrige Criteria] to improve processes. This patent was not really to be egotistical, to say we have a patent, but to revolutionize our industry." What innovation or intelligent risk would you pursue to revolutionize your industry?