Posted by Christine Schaefer Last month in Missouri, the Governor’s Conference on Baldrige in Education kicked off a large-scale improvement initiative that has the backing of key education groups in the state. With a mission to "facilitate school districts’ deployment of the leadership and management principles that have been developed by the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program," the Missouri Network for Educational Improvement (MNEI) aims to support Missouri school districts’ use of the Baldrige Education Criteria for Performance Excellence to improve student learning, educators’ satisfaction, and other important results. "For Missouri to compete in today’s global economy, our students need to graduate from high school ready to succeed in college and careers," stated Missouri Governor Jay Nixon in announcing the conference. "To accomplish that goal we need a comprehensive approach that includes not just more resources, but also higher expectations, greater accountability and a commitment to excellence at every level." Nixon urged all school districts to implement the Baldrige Criteria. The MNEI represents a partnership of the University of Missouri College of Education (CoED), the Missouri School Boards Association (MSBA), and the Missouri Association of School Administrators (MASA). The network also is working in consultation with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Excellence in Missouri Foundation, among other organizations. Hosted by the University of Missouri, the early December conference was attended by superintendents from throughout the state, many of whom were accompanied by members of their leadership teams and boards of education. They heard from leaders of Baldrige Award recipients in education and business, among other experts, of beneficial impacts of using the Baldrige framework for performance excellence. Among key presenters was JoAnn Sternke, superintendent of the Pewaukee (Wisconsin) School District, a national 2013 Baldrige Award recipient. Sternke shared how, with adoption of a Baldrige systems approach to performance excellence, "the system drives the strategy." Innovation results from having systems in place, she said, and using the Criteria has freed schools to become more innovative. In reference to a popular claim from Baldrige-using hospitals that patients’ lives have been saved as a result of using the framework, Sternke pointed out that it "saves lives in education, too." Some schools see Baldrige as one more thing on their plate, acknowledged Sternke. But she stressed, "It’s not one more thing on your plate; it’s a way to organize your plate." Schools can save money from support services with improvements made as a result of using the Baldrige framework, she said, and they can funnel those funds to instruction. In her district, use of the Baldrige Criteria has provided for alignment of efforts, she added, with everyone talking the "same language of improvement." Also speaking at the conference, Menomonee Falls (Wisconsin) School District Superintendent Pat Greco shared how her district combines use of the Baldrige Criteria with resources from the Studer Education Group, Jim Shipley and Associates, and a local community college to improve and excel in leadership, strategic planning and deployment, and a focus on customers. Greco spoke enthusiastically about how use of the Baldrige framework aligns performance. Her district is now performing in the top 5% of districts in the state, she pointed out, whereas five years ago, it was labelled as needing improvement. Today district leadership teams check their progress on action plans every 45 days; at the classroom level, teachers and students benefit from 10- to 15-day cycles of improvement in teaching and learning processes. "We’re very excited about what’s happening in Missouri today with the push for excellence in schools using the Education Criteria and other Baldrige resources," said Sandra Byrne, a senior staff member and education specialist with the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program. "We hope to see Missouri school districts joining Pewaukee as Baldrige Award recipients in future years. Of course, the biggest winners will be the students, parents, teachers, and community members they serve." 

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey "How will my investment in a criteria/award program impact my bottom-line?" is a question commonly asked by senior leaders. In other words, "What’s in it for my organization?" For 2014, French Brothers of Alamogordo, New Mexico, earned a Bronze NHQA award. For senior leaders in the home building industry who have invested in the National Housing Quality Award (NHQA), an award and education program modeled after the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA), such investment has led to growth in sales during the recession, expansion into new markets, and customer satisfaction, which has reached 100% for some builders. Developed in 1992 from a Department of Energy grant, NHQA’s goal is to inform and educate builders about the leadership needed to create customer- and quality-driven companies. It is now part of the National Housing Quality Program, sponsored by Professional Builder magazine. NHQA Director Serge Ogranovitch said that over 90% of NHQA’s 100 award winners are still in business, and he attributes this to quality management systems and well-managed companies. A study of NHQA winners from 1993 to 2009 showed metrics such as gross profits of 12-20%, construction costs vs. budgets of +/- 1%, cycle time reductions of 15-50%, zero defects at closing of 98%, defect reductions of 11-75%, referral rates of 30%, and trade satisfaction of 94%. NHQA uses criteria based on the basic concepts of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, a management systems framework, but adapted to the home building industry. For example, instead of a focus on suppliers as in the Baldrige Criteria, the NHQA criteria focus on trade relationships and support. Like the Baldrige Criteria, the NHQA criteria are very customer focused, said Ogranovitch. Denis Leonard, who has been both an examiner for NHQA and MBNQA, said NHQA builders use the criteria with quality management tools and techniques to drive performance improvement. "[NHQA builders] have a strong focus on strategic planning, employee empowerment, trade relationships, and of course the customer," he said. "Evaluating your business against the Baldrige-based NHQA criteria can help you identify areas for improvement just as these builders have done. . . . [To be profitable in 2014, home builders] need to focus on . . . reducing waste, rework, warranty costs, improving cycle time, everything that can make us more effective and efficient in all aspects of our business and in every home we build, and quality management tools and techniques are how that can be achieved." Ogranovitch said he reviews the Baldrige Criteria every year to see what changes have been made and what new concepts should be adopted as improvements to the NHQA criteria. He said NHQA is now looking at adding the use of technology into its criteria, as technology is impacting every aspect of home building, including online checklists, details/specification sheets, payments, and tutorials. Ogranovitch added that he returns to the Baldrige Criteria when he "wants to see what’s going on. I truly believe that the people involved in doing Baldrige and helping to guide Baldrige are truly good thinkers in industries and quality management. If they have ideas and concepts that would be beneficial for [NHQA], I want to be aware of them. I want to stay current." Use of a criteria as a management framework has not been an easy concept for many home builders who tend to be entrepreneurial in nature, said Ogranovitch. Such builders were more used to taking notes and acting on their own experiences and instinct when making management decisions. But builders who have embraced the NHQA criteria like the standardization and the strengths and opportunities pointed out in feedback reports. "They like the idea of having an industry’s best practices there to help them," Ogranovitch added. The NHQA evaluation process is similar to the one used by the Baldrige Program. NHQA examiners are management and/or industry experts whose evaluation requires them to answer 147 questions gleaned from builders’ 17-page applications. The examiners score each application, and a high-enough score sends three NHQA examiners to a 1.5-day site visit of the builder to validate the content of the application and to find opportunities for improvement. A final phase of the site visit is a customer satisfaction survey given to the builders’ customers over the last 12 months to ensure that the builders’ customers are still satisfied. "Lots of builders really love [the NHQA process and criteria] because they see it as a process to improve their companies," said Ogranovitch. Builders often apply for the NHQA multiple times because of the feedback reports they receive after the process. Like Baldrige applicants, many builders use their NHQA feedback reports as "a guideline for marketing and strategic plans," he said, because the reports include hints and ideas on how to improve. Such feedback reports, Ogranovitch added, contain $30,000 worth of consulting for much less. "The value is wonderful." How would you adapt the Baldrige Criteria for your industry or organization?

Posted by Christine Schaefer A few months ago, my family received a personal reminder of the importance of quality in the skilled-nursing care profession. It was delivered as my elderly father was transitioning from a hospital to a nursing home. With the advancement of his dementia and a few other vexing conditions, his health status had declined quickly. It was obvious to doctors and family members alike that we were acting in his best interests in moving him to a care center where he could receive the support he needed. Yet I will never forget the spooked and bewildered look in his eyes as his stretcher was wheeled out of an ambulance in front of the nursing facility that was to be his new home. And I will never forget how reduced and vulnerable he looked, shivering in a hospital gown in the brisk autumn air, seemingly unable to even ask where we were going. "Dad, it’s OK. This is the right place for you," I said more than once as we moved down the hall to his bedroom. While I had enough objective information to support my assurances of the nursing care center’s high quality, I kept looking for any sign of less-than-stellar care. Fortunately, I found none. And I will never forget how relieved I felt. If you’ve ever moved a loved one into a care center, you can fully appreciate my initial concern that day. And you might also appreciate my enthusiasm in reporting now on the excellent quality ratings and other beneficial results of nursing homes that have received top honors in recent years in the thriving Baldrige-based quality awards program of the American Health Care Association (AHCA). Using the Baldrige Health Care Criteria for Performance Excellence as a basis for organizational assessments, the AHCA/National Center for Assisted Living (NCAL) National Quality Award Program draws applicants each year from some 12,280 long-term and post-acute care providers represented by the association. Between its inception in 1996 and 2012, the sector-specific award program received more than 8,000 applications and presented more than 3,000 awards at three levels: Gold, Silver, and Bronze (with 13, 256, and 2,856 awards issued at those levels, respectively). To be considered for the highest level of Gold, applicants must demonstrate "systematic quality performance and organizational effectiveness," as stated in AHCA’s 2013 Quality Report (PDF file). The 2013 Quality Report spotlights some impressive aggregated results of Silver- and Gold-level award recipients of the National Quality Award program from 2010 through 2012 (see pages 20 and 21). Consider the following two charts, which plot results data (provided by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) of AHCA/NCAL top-tier award recipients in comparison to aggregated results of all other industry peers: Reprinted with AHCA permission Reprinted with AHCA permission As part of AHCA’s Quality Initiative launched in 2012, the association encourages its member organizations across the country to focus on the following four goals: (1) safely reduce hospital readmissions; (2) increase staff stability; (3) increase customer satisfaction; and (4) safely reduce off-label use of antipsychotics. Urvi Shah, quality improvement manager at AHCA, recently affirmed the importance of organizations’ use of the Baldrige Criteria as a framework for quality improvement—in general and in relation to achieving those four goals (for which AHCA has specific target dates and measures, as described in the 2013 report). "We tell our members that following the Baldrige Criteria will help them accomplish not only the four goals, but any goal they have," said Shah. The AHCA/NCAL National Quality Award program, like the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award program on which it’s based, also emphasizes that the improvements made during an organization’s quest for excellence are much more important than winning the award. "When organizations apply for the [AHCA/NCAL] award," Shah said, "we say, ‘use your feedback report and see this as a journey of quality improvement.’" Surely, the customers—and the family members of customers—served by nursing homes agree on this: we want to see every such organization achieving excellence!

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey It’s always an honor to highlight our nation’s heroes, especially during this holiday season when we should be thankful for so many blessings. Here’s one story of how our nation’s heroes in Texas are actively working to achieve and sustain high levels of performance using the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence as a business model. I recently had the unique honor of a virtual conversation with Sergeant First Class Brenda Lopez, Organizational Excellence NCO, and Major Phil Kost, TXARNG Strategic Plans Branch Chief, of the Texas Army National Guard (TXARNG). TXARNG serves a dual state and federal mission, responding to both domestic emergencies and supporting active duty Army abroad. And just recently Texas guardsmen were called to duty to help local communities cope with the severe winter storms in the region. Tell me a little about the Army Communities of Excellence and the Texas Army National Guard. How do guardsmen use the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence? The Baldrige-based Army Communities of Excellence (ACOE) program empowers Army organizations to achieve and sustain high levels of performance by using an integrated management approach based on the Baldrige Criteria. Although ACOE participation is voluntary, the program highly encourages Army organizations to participate and assess the overall health of their organizations, share best practices with other Army communities, and implement a continuous process improvement mindset. The Texas Army National Guard (TXARNG) utilizes the Baldrige Criteria as a business model to determine the current state of the organization through detailed self-assessments. To aide in this endeavor, TXARNG has created a cross-functional working group to create and analyze both individual and organizational processes in order to allow the organization to meet, exceed, and sustain established performance measures. This cross-functional working group has senior representatives from each key department of TXARNG with the organizational knowledge that is needed to better understand where TXARNG has been and where it should be going in the future. What has been the value of this process for the Texas Army National Guard? Participation in the ACOE program has brought great value to TXARNG and the way we conduct business from a management perspective. Through self-assessments and feedback reports, we are able to identify and share our best practices, take action on opportunities for improvement, and increase the overall performance of our organization. While there are other methodologies for process improvement, the Baldrige Criteria used in ACOE assist organizations, to include the TXARNG, align their strategic goals and objectives with organizational excellence through the established Criteria categories. An example of a process improvement came from feedback that led to an after-action review to address fiscal accountability and support for a key community. Prior to fiscal year 2012, requests for ACOE funds were submitted through an Excel spreadsheet, which caused delays in processing and tracking. Using the feedback and a Kaizen Rapid Improvement event, the Organizational Excellence Team created a Web site with instructions, user-friendly funds request, and response functions, as well as contact information. This improved the process to fullfil ACOE funding requests made by internal organizations, providing better tracking for fiscal accountability purposes. Other improvements derived through the ACOE process were the establishment of a new strategic planning process map to be used as a model for upcoming plans and new surveys to focus improvements in areas of importance to the workforce. What have the different departments learned about Baldrige, the Criteria, and process mapping? Why is this learning important? The TXARNG departments have learned that ACOE is more than just a competition; it is about providing a common vocabulary that facilitates an environment of excellence and continuous process improvement. They understand the importance of implementing a business model that will bring consistency to the organization’s management style through systematic and effective processes that drive innovation and improve performance. Although different departments have different duties and responsibilities, they have learned that each individual process is aligned and integrated with one another in order to achieve the overarching mission of TXARNG. Process mapping has helped our different departments identify how their workforce gets the job done, non-value steps or redundancy, and areas they can improve. They have also learned the importance of integrating our customers, partners, and workforce into organizational change processes that will have lasting impacts to our organization.

Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon The results are in for the annual Best Places to Work In the Federal Government. The overall survey results are not surprising based on history, the current environment, and where many organizations (government and business) have been challenged over recent years in the area of workforce engagement. Government-wide job satisfaction dipped for the third year in a row. It dropped 7.2 points since 2010 to 57.8% in 2013. The largest drop in satisfaction was with pay; the second largest was with opportunities for training and development. And, in 2013 senior leadership received a government-wide satisfaction rating of 45.4%. According to Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, "In an environment where you are calling for more from your employees,  leadership has to do a better job of sharing information, recognizing good work and empowering the workforce to succeed in a challenging environment." The highest scoring agency was NASA. Jeri Buchholz, NASA’s assistant administrator for human capital said, "We talk about culture issues and employee engagement at every senior leadership meeting." She added that the agency has focused on leadership development. Both Stier’s and Buchholz’s comments should be music to the ears of all of us who have been guided by the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. Stier and Buchholz speak to key attributes of role model leaders contained in the Baldrige Criteria. The attributes are part of the Baldrige core value descriptor for visionary leadership. Item 1.1 on Senior Leadership asks how senior leaders create a sustainable organization through: creating an environment for mission achievement, performance improvement and leadership, and organizational and personal learning creating a workforce culture that focuses on customer engagement creating an environment for innovation, and participating in the development of future leaders It also asks how senior leaders engage in frank, open two-way communication with employees and how they focus the organization on action. The definition of performance excellence adopted by Bladrige has three components. The last component, learned from role model organizations (Baldrige Award recipients), is a commitment to organizational and personal learning. And in a study we did a number of years ago of Baldrige Award recipients, the highest scoring area across all sectors for role model organizations was Item 1.1,, Senior Leadership! It all sounds very logical. You now know how the federal government stacked up. How about your organization?

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey Upon hearing of Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano being named a 2013 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient, U.S. Congressman Sam Johnson (TX-03) recognized the organization for receiving the nation’s highest Presidential honor for performance excellence through innovative practices and visionary leadership. On the floor of Congress, he said, "For nearly a decade, Baylor Plano has provided North Texas with high quality and compassionate care. Their superior patient satisfaction rate and dedication to training the best and the brightest go unmatched. Baylor Plano’s success and patient-centered care is a testament to . . . endless possibilities." Baylor, the first Texas hospital to ever receive the national award, also received the Texas Award for Performance Excellence in 2010. With the Health Care Criteria as a management framework/guide and numerous cycles of continuous improvement stemming from their use, the hospital posts role-model results; for example, Baylor Plano has consistently performed within the top 10 percent of hospitals nationwide for a variety of key health care measures. Patient satisfaction surveys for the past five years have rated Baylor Plano’s inpatient, outpatient, and ambulatory surgery services with scores of 90 percent or higher, exceeding national benchmarks. Baylor Plano maintained an above-90-percent retention rate for first-year employees and for all employees for the past three years. Baylor Plano currently stands at a 95 percent retention rate for new employees and at 94 percent for all employees. "Countless hours of work went into preparing the Baldrige Award application, and I am so proud to learn that the [Baldrige examiners] who visited Baylor Plano in October were impressed by the top-to-bottom quality they found at all levels," said Jerri Garison, president of Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano. "This honor is a true reflection of the passion that our hospital staff, physicians, and board members have for our patients. I am so privileged to work with such dedicated staff members, and I would like to thank each of them for their hard work and contribution on this journey." "Receiving this award is a great honor for Baylor Plano and for our entire health care system," said Joel Allison, CEO of Baylor Scott & White Health, for which Baylor Plano is an owned/operated hospital. "[The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award] is one of the most prestigious awards given in America, and it is the first time any hospital in Texas has ever received this national honor. I want to extend my congratulations to the entire Baylor Plano team on this outstanding, well-deserved achievement." To learn more about how the Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano used the Criteria  and about its best practices, consider attending the 26th Annual Quest for Excellence Conference®.

Posted by Christine Schaefer In education, as in other sectors, being a small organization is not an impediment to winning a Baldrige Award. With fewer than 3,000 students and 300 staff members, Pewaukee (Wisconsin) School District provides the latest example of this fact. As the district’s superintendent JoAnn Sternke recently stated, "We’re a small organization that has become very focused on using the Baldrige [Education] Criteria to help us improve. We’re the little engine that could." As noted before, no organization is too small to benefit from use of the Baldrige Criteria. Having used the Baldrige Education Criteria for Performance Excellence since 2007, Pewaukee School District was demonstrating excellence in wide-ranging processes and results by 2010, when it won the Wisconsin Forward Award of its state-level, Baldrige-based quality program. Pewaukee’s strong demonstration of excellence enabled it to win the national Baldrige Award in 2013, becoming the seventh school district in the history of the program to win the national award. The district boasts one of the highest graduation rates in its state, despite also having a relatively tough graduation requirement (28 credits), as well as very low truancy and dropout rates. What’s more, the rate of college attendance among the district’s graduates has increased from 78.8 percent in the 2006-2007 school year to 91.9 percent in the 2011-2012 school year, compared to a state rate of 74.1 percent. While having added Advanced Placement (AP) course offerings in recent years, the district achieved an AP exam passing rate (76 percent, as of 2011-2012) that is eight percentage points higher than the statewide rate. And on ACT college-readiness tests, district students have outperformed both state and national comparisons with their aggregate score of 23.4. Sternke has noted that "leveraging the Baldrige Criteria helped us look at improving all the processes in our organization and streamline spending. We had to be very good and strategic about setting achievement goals." With strategic planning processes in place that reflect the Baldrige Criteria and best practices, her district develops action plans to ensure the accomplishment of its strategic objectives and reviews them every 90 days. The district boasted a completion rate of 98 percent for action plans during the most recent school year. Perhaps not surprisingly, Pewaukee schools also have engendered high levels of satisfaction among parents and staff members. In fact, parent satisfaction rates (between 91 and 95 percent) at all district schools last year outperformed the national average rate of 74 percent. To learn more about this district’s inspirational results and journey to excellence, check out the profile of the organization on our Web site and attend the Quest for Excellence® conference this coming April, where district leaders will be on hand to share their story and best practices.

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey Janet Wagner, CEO of Sutter Davis Hospital (SDH), the smallest hospital ever to receive a Baldrige Award and the first in the Sacramento area, was recently profiled in a Sacramento Bee article about the ten-year journey in which the hospital adopted, implemented, customized, refined, and eventually integrated Baldrige Health Criteria for Performance Excellence principles into its operations. "When we started, we really had to do some self-reflection and say, ‘What is it that we do best? What’s our core competency?’" Wagner said. "And my managers and the doctors and my employees said, ‘Our core competency is our culture of caring; how we take care of each other, our patients, our doctors, our community.’" The 2013 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award winner found that by engaging its staff and integrating Baldrige principles into how it provides care-in a customized way that led to specific behaviors and a training module-SDH employees moved from simply satisfying patients to giving them a "remarkable customer experience." In a Digital Journal article, Wagner explained how patients have been impacted by the Baldrige win. "Winning the Baldrige says something to your community. It tells them that you’ve got one of the best hospitals in the country, and that the people there are working very hard to provide the very best care. When patients receive care at Sutter Davis Hospital, they know that the team here really does care about their welfare and is doing the very best for them. The Baldrige Framework for Performance Excellence works," said Wagner. "The Baldrige Award has brought interview requests from media outlets around the nation and a number of speaking engagements . . . but the reward is what [SDH's leaders] learned and [are] learning about connecting with employees’ belief systems, establishing a framework for continuous improvement, and ensuring that every patient is embraced by a culture of caring," Wagner added. The results that the nonprofit, 48-bed acute care hospital has achieved make the point: SDH performance scores for specific patient groups such as acute myocardial infarction, congestive heart failure, and pneumonia have ranked in the top 10 percent nationally since 2010. SDH exceeds the top 10 percent benchmarks nationally for readmission rates and average length of stay for pneumonia, heart failure, and acute myocardial infarction, as well as average length of stay for both Medicare and overall inpatient care. SDH demonstrates high standards for work and process efficiency. For example, the average door-to-doctor time in emergency has decreased from 45 minutes in 2008 to 22 minutes in 2012, well below the California benchmark of 58 minutes. An organizational focus on people is reflected in SDH’s employee satisfaction and engagement scores, which exceed the top 10 percent of marks in a national survey database. SDH has been named a 100 Top Hospital by Truven four times, including for the past three years. "In spite of the struggles that health care finds itself in today, there is great care being delivered every day to every patient at Sutter Davis Hospital," said Wagner. "This recognition from the Baldrige Foundation may seem like the end to a long journey; however, it is just a springboard to executing the many innovative ideas and processes that this complex health care environment demands." Part of SDH’s journey was its engagement with the California Awards for Performance Excellence (CAPE)-part of the Alliance for Performance Excellence, a network of Baldrige-based state and sector programs. Prior to its national Baldrige recognition, from CAPE, SDH received three Eureka Gold-level awards, as well as the Governor’s Award for Excellence in California. Both the Baldrige Award and CAPE processes include volunteer examiners who provide expertise through feedback reports that SDH and other award applicants receive and use to address opportunities for improvement. To learn more about SDH’s improvement journey, best practices, and results, attend the 26th Annual Quest for Excellence Conference®. Also, watch a Quality Digest two-part video interview with CEO Janet Wagner and a live video webcast with Wagner and Baldrige Program Director Robert Fangmeyer on Quality Digest Live, February 14, at 11 a.m. Pacific.

Posted by Christine Schaefer Ever read about a business failure and felt passionate about ways the organization could have avoided it? Consider the case of a large company that suffered a huge loss after a major customer switched to a competitor for future business. Reading the details in the news, I quickly became convinced the company would not have made key decisions that preceded the failure had its leadership embraced the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence as a management framework. Before I delve further into this case, let me be clear that I do not intend to publicly criticize a particular organization here. Therefore, I will not name it, and I will blind its identity by avoiding specific descriptors and the time frame. I am, however, outlining a few key elements of the story because they highlight performance lacks that need not be permanent and process failures that need not be repeated. After all, Baldrige Award winners of every size and sector over the years have shown that full adoption of the systems perspective at the heart of the Baldrige Criteria can dramatically improve organizational leadership and results. Surely, the Baldrige framework could yet help the company in question (and many others) steer clear of costly blunders in the future. Here are salient details of the story: prior to its large-scale customer and market share loss, the organization experienced significant problems with product quality and delivery results. A root cause named by a sector expert was the leadership’s cost-cutting in a key area impacting product quality (apparently harming one of the company’s most important core competencies, in Baldrige Criteria terms) in order to benefit the company’s stock price. While we usually use this space to describe the inspirational achievements of organizations that have used the Baldrige Criteria to improve and excel, we have heard that spotlighting opportunities of improvements can also promote learning. (For example, in response to a Blogrige post last year, some readers suggested that negative case studies are indeed instructive.) So, using the story above as such a negative case study, let’s pretend the organization is fictitious; call it Americawidgets. Now, let’s consider a few sample questions provided by the Criteria for Performance Excellence that Americawidgets could use to assess its processes and improve its performance in relation to its customer focus (category 3 of the Criteria): How do you seek immediate and actionable feedback from customers on the quality of products, customer support, and transactions? How do you determine customer satisfaction and engagement? How do your measurements capture actionable information to use in exceeding your customers’ expectations and securing your customers’ engagement for the long term? How do you obtain information on your customers’ satisfaction relative to their satisfaction with your competitors? How do you determine customer dissatisfaction? How do your measurements capture actionable information to use in meeting your customers’ requirements and exceeding their expectations in the future? Of course, Criteria self-assessment questions on leadership (category 1), strategic planning (category 2), and operations focus (category 6), among other areas, also could help strengthen Americawidgets to recover from and prevent more customer, financial, and market losses. All the Baldrige questions are designed to work together as an integrated framework for managing performance. Answering them could help Americawidgets deliver greater value to its customers, contributing to its sustainability; improve its overall effectiveness and capability; and improve and grow as an organization.  

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey How to Boil the Ocean In 2012, Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control (MFC) participated in the Baldrige Executive Fellows Program. As part of the program, John Varley and the other Fellows were given homework: identify a significant challenge in their organizations and use the principles of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence to achieve significant improvement. Varley, vice president for Quality and Mission Success-at the 2012 Baldrige Award recipient that designs, develops, manufactures, and supports advanced combat, missile, rocket, and sensor systems for the U.S. and foreign military-knew that MFC’s most significant area of improvement was the supply chain. Over the past year, the economy had hit the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and its contractors hard, and as spending became tighter, the smaller subcontractors in the industry-those who support the large contractors-were hit the hardest. According to Steven Sessions, supplier quality director and deputy, Quality Mission and Success, MFC has a multitier supply chain, with suppliers who have subcontractors and so forth, so there are several tiers of suppliers that support MFC. Sessions says when the economy began to squeeze the lower-level, smaller contractors, the tendency was not to lay off the person who created the parts but the person who was in charge of checking the quality of the parts. MFC has contractual relationships with the first line of its supply chain, but how do you assess the risk with lower-level tiers that farm out parts of their work? Sessions said that MFC was already working on strategies to address supply chain issues when his colleague came back from a Baldrige Executive Fellows session with the idea for a project that "was pretty startling to colleagues." Varley’s project focused on how to improve the entire DOD supply chain. "[Such a project] was closer to boiling the ocean," Sessions says. "We have 2,000+ suppliers, and now we would be taking on a project to help companies that are competitors improve their own organizations." "John’s premise was that we either all improve together or all decline together because we are so integrated," Sessions says. "It was an interesting insight. We tried to figure out how to use the Malcolm Baldrige [Criteria] model to open up doors to companies that five years ago you would never have thought would open their doors to share processes, tools, and techniques on how to improve the DOD supply chain." Sessions added that years ago, the top DOD suppliers like Lockheed Martin were very distinct entities, but now they often act as partners in some programs, competitors in others, and suppliers in still others. Based on the Baldrige Criteria, a strategy called Senior Leadership Engagement and Benchmarking was developed by MFC, and MFC’s senior leaders set out to meet with the senior leaders of the other top DOC contractors, getting their commitment around the strategy that we all go up or down together. The sharing-ideas strategy really took off, with more than 18 major DOD suppliers and others standing in line to take part, Sessions says. "The Malcolm Baldrige Award has made the whole effort take off to the point now where we’re having to leverage seasoned people with more people in the organization in order to keep up with requests," Sessions says. "The interesting part is that we started out thinking that we are going to be . . . helping [other DOD contractors] improve, and we’ve been able to do that. But out of it, we gained a lot of insight into areas in which we can improve our journey as well. What started out as boiling the ocean, materialized into a real partnership and relationship with some significant companies that are coming up with ideas on how to improve the supply chain that any one of us by ourselves probably would not have been able to achieve." Sessions says that MFC is working on other strategies to improve the overall DOD supply chain in the long term; for example, staff members are working on how to prevent counterfeit parts from getting into its systems. In close alignment with its customer, MFC is teaming with others in the industry to solve this complex, difficult problem. Benchmarking Against the Best "The Malcolm Baldrige model is a very structured approach to improving your business," Sessions says, but MFC didn’t turn to the Baldrige Criteria because it needed a framework for improvement. MFC had already won a host of awards, including awards from the Baldrige-based Sterling Award in Florida and Texas Quality Award. MFC decided that we wanted to get a good, solid, independent benchmark of where MFC was relevant to its performance, Session says. As they decided whom and how to benchmark, they brought forward the "world-class" Baldrige Criteria. "We had several ideas of how to benchmark," he says. "But we wanted to be benchmarked by the best of the best. Our focus was to [apply for the Baldrige Award and] get a site visit and get the outcome of where we stood and where we could improve some more." Sessions says, "As we began to understand the [Baldrige Criteria], we found that it was very similar to our own vision for improvement that we had been using over the past 10 years. . . . The reason people model themselves around the Malcolm Baldrige model is to get that kind of proven, world-class performance. . . . We’ve seen dramatic achievements across the business because our senior leaders had the right premises to line up with the Malcolm Baldrige model." Frank McManus, senior quality leader, MFC, says that when MFC chose to begin using the Baldrige Criteria, "Our leaders wanted us to get not so much the award but the feedback. Having the site visit, with examiners coming to various facilities [and those examiners] representing many different industries and experiences and getting that kind of view [became a] vantage point of how we’re operating and continuously improving." "The examiners were the carrot," he added; receiving their feedback was incredibly valuable. The Right Metrics and Why the Baldrige Criteria Sessions said the MFC business model was structured very similarly to the Baldrige Criteria-very focused on the customer and aligned with leadership and every aspect of the organization. A Strategic Enterprise Leadership Counsel reviews the MFC business model to ensure that it aligns with both customer and business needs. Key to the MFC business model is having the right metrics to drive performance that align with customers and are tied to every level of the workforce. Similarly, Session says, the Malcolm Baldrige model focuses on customers, with each operational focus tied into a metric system that is aligned with strategic planning and customer needs. "That’s the beauty of [such a model]," says Session. "It’s very easy for our leadership team to see where areas for improvement are needed because of the instrumentation we have from the smallest of teams to 16 sites, and it rolls up from all of those organizations to the top. . . . We are very process focused with data-driven decisions, and our customer is the primary focus area. We know if we get it right for the customer, our business will follow. The Malcolm Baldrige model follows all these same tenets-always focusing on the customer with robust processes and data-driven decisions. It was a natural fit." For other organizations, Sessions says the value of the Baldrige Criteria is the structured framework and focus on the customer. "Sometimes companies get too inwardly focused and end up losing sight of [what the customer really needs]. Comparing yourself with other industries and what’s considered the best of the best brings insights." Sessions said that when MFC started with the Baldrige Criteria, "We literally had to flip all of our metrics upside down." Its performance had gotten so good that it was focusing on just the 1% of parts that were coming in bad, for example. To complete its application for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, MFC had to flip its model to show the good parts of its supply chain, and this led to interesting observations. "When you start to benchmark yourself, it makes you look at metrics differently," Sessions says. "The whole organization was pretty astonished when it started to pull together metrics in one place [for its Baldrige Award application]. It makes you look back and forward in how you have been performing on your journey and where it would take you. That’s the value [of writing a Baldrige Award application]-that reflection and insight on where we go next." For more information, attend MFC’s special presentation, "Improving the Supply Chain Using Baldrige," at the Baldrige Program’s Quest for Excellence® Conference in Baltimore, Maryland.