Posted by Christine Schaefer  Next week in Tennessee, one city, two government agencies, and 11 units of a third agency will be among the organizations receiving state-level Baldrige awards for the results and improvements they’ve achieved in recent years using the Criteria for Performance Excellence as a management framework. Those awards will be bestowed at the annual award ceremony of the Tennessee Center for Performance Excellence (TNCPE), a member of the Alliance for Performance Excellence network that provides a feeder system for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. (Similar Baldrige-based quality award programs can be found around the country.) One of the state agencies that will be honored next Wednesday with a TNCPE award is the Tennessee Department of Human Resources. "We are proud to participate in what TNCPE is doing to help organizations across Tennessee move forward in creating a culture of performance excellence," said Rebecca Hunter, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Human Resources (DOHR). "While the most important part of this application and award process for us is the outstanding feedback we receive from the examiners, we can also say that since we began to focus on the [Baldrige] Criteria, we have more clarity around our mission, vision, and values. We find that the daily work of our entire team is more focused on our strategic plan and key success factors." "DOHR has fewer than 100 employees whose work serves more than 43,000 state employees and ultimately reaches the more than 6 million residents of Tennessee," added Hunter. "Everyone benefits from the greater efficiency and effectiveness of our department’s key processes." TNCPE’s president and CEO Katie Rawls noted that in the organization’s first year of submitting an award application, DOHR already has earned a Level 2 award among the four levels in TNCPE’s tiered award program. Next Wednesday TNCPE will also present a Level 3 award to the City of Germantown (for the second year in a row) and a Level 2 award to the state’s Bureau of TennCare. In addition, the Tennessee Housing Development Agency, nine county health departments, and two other departments under the auspices of the state health department each earned Level 1 TNCPE awards in the 2013 program. In 2012, state agencies that received TNCPE awards included the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services (Level 2), the Department of Environment and Conservation (Level 1), and the Department of Health (Level 1). In 2012 TNCPE also recognized two public-sector organizations for achieving the highest, Level 4, of excellence: the (municipally owned) Bristol Tennessee Essential Services and the Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority (a unit of the metropolitan government of Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee). How did these wide-reaching Tennessee government entities become involved with the Baldrige program in their state? According to Rawls, since its creation as a public/private partnership 20 years ago, the TNCPE "has always had a connection to state government, though it has ebbed and flowed." In recent years, she explains, a major catalyst for state government involvement in the Baldrige program has been John Dreyzehner, Tennessee’s commissioner of health. Dreyzehner has been leading his department in use of the Baldrige Criteria since becoming state commissioner of health in 2011. He also now serves on the board of directors of TNCPE. Rawls credits the participation of two state commissioners on TNCPE’s board with greatly boosting use of the Baldrige framework in the Tennessee government. Dreyzehner has been particularly helpful, said Rawls, in explaining how the Baldrige framework can help people in government. She said he coached her in how to frame the Criteria for Performance Excellence in presenting it to government organizations, in particular, by not leaving the impression that use of the Criteria is something beyond other performance improvement tools that adds a lot more work. Instead, Dreyzehner has characterized the Baldrige framework as being "like the plastic thingy that helps you hold together a six-pack of beer" in relation to other improvement tools and plans and priorities for work processes. To illustrate this value, Rawls worked with Emily Passino, a Lean expert in the state, to create the crosswalk graphic shown below (and linked here as a PDF file: TNCPE Lean Crosswalk) that depicts the Baldrige Criteria framework in the context of the state government’s vision and work processes. Completed and presented at a Lean roundtable in October 2013, this tool was designed to help state employees see how the Criteria categories and questions complement Lean improvement methodology and support all areas of their work. Created by Emily Passino and Katie Rawls. Used with permission. Interviewed separately, Dreyzehner credited TNCPE for being "a model, high-performing state Baldrige organization." He said Rawls was helpful from the start when he contacted her years ago to learn more about the TNCPE program and resources to promote improvements and excellence in Tennessee’s local health departments’ performance. Dreyzehner had first learned about the Baldrige Criteria as a young Air Force captain and flight surgeon in the early 1990s. "The Air Force was very interested in performance excellence," he recalled, "and was looking at and beginning to use the Baldrige Criteria as a framework." Later, as a district health director in Virginia working with counties in Tennessee, Dreyzehner became intrigued by the use of the Baldrige framework in Tennessee’s Sullivan County, which had been initiated by the county’s public health director, Gary Mayes. Today, Dreyzehner takes pride that 11 subunits of his state health department will receive Level 1 TNCPE recognition at the ceremony next week. He says that his organization will apply at the next level in 2014. At the same time, he stresses, "We’re about the journey, not the award."   "What this is about is empowering employees in public service. We’re trying to foster this framework throughout the organization in order to get everybody engaged," he said. "We’re looking to encourage a posture in everybody . . . so that they’re in a position to make the customer’s experience transformative rather than just transactional."   "We want customers to feel that they’re getting really good value," he added. "A lot of times people are coming to us not because they want to, but because they have to. It is a privilege to be in public service. We really want to delight the people we serve if we can." Dreyzehner’s agency provides direct services to 1 in 5 Tennesseans, while also touching on the lives of all residents through its regulatory role. "This is one of the reasons having [the Baldrige] framework is so important: so everybody [providing government services] can have a common approach," he said. To that end, more than a dozen employees in his agency have been trained as TNCPE examiners and are helping to lead their units in the health department, according to Dreyzehner. In addition, he said, more than 500 employees have been trained in the Baldrige Criteria over the last few years. Among other Tennessee organizations helped by their involvement with TNCPE is TRICOR, a quasi-governmental organization (self-funded with a board of directors appointed by the governor) that provides job training for individuals incarcerated in the state. TRICOR sent its first employee to become trained as a TNCPE examiner in 2008; by 2011 it had earned a Level 2 TNCPE award. When preparing an organizational profile for its first (Level 1) TNCPE award application, TRICOR leaders and employees had an epiphany. According to TRICOR CEO Patricia Weiland, as they were discussing the elements of their organizational profile, they realized the mission needed to be restated to make clear TRICOR’s core purpose of preparing people for employment. "We got involved with Baldrige and TNCPE for our sustainability," said Weiland. "Until we got involved with Baldrige process, we’d always recognized as our key customers those individuals who purchased our products and services. Once we were going through the TNCPE application as well as our strategic planning process we realized that we had missed a key customer—the offenders who were working in our training programs. We had to change our mission and vision statement, and one of our performance indicators became reducing recidivism." She added, "It was amazing. It has changed the culture and direction of our organization. It has brought clarity to where we need to spend our time and our resources. Being involved in the Baldrige process has placed us as a national leader in the field of reentry." As Dreyzehner suggested, with the number of organizations in his state using and benefitting from Baldrige resources, the momentum of performance improvement and excellence has been building across the public and private sectors alike: "It’s an exciting time in Tennessee state government. The state government started the TNCPE, and it’s really benefitted our private sector. And I see more and more people are seeing the value of it. Our governor, Bill Haslam, is really interested in management and alignment and seeing that we’re delivering the best service for the lowest cost." "More and more of the [state government] departments are using the TNCPE and the Baldrige framework to help us do that," he added. "It’s one of the things that gives our state a competitive advantage."  

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey  Innovation, intelligent risking, sustainability, and visionary leadership are all concepts that appear in the Baldrige Health Care Criteria for Performance Excellence. And in today’s health care environment, a culture that embodies these concepts may be just what is needed for the health care organization of the future—both in conforming to the Affordable Care Act and in delivering the highest-quality patient-centered care. In southeastern New Jersey, one health care system is looking at the difficult journey to that future and has been evolving its business model-with the Criteria as a framework for its success. Recently, 2009 Baldrige Award recipient AtlantiCare, a nonprofit health system, the largest provider in its region, announced that it had signed a letter of intent to partner with Geisinger Health System, an integrated health system in rural Pennsylvania. "Following a thorough year-long search process to find the right partner to continue our transformation of health care, we are pleased to move forward with a letter of intent with Geisinger Health System, a national model for innovation and value," said AtlantiCare President and Chief Executive Officer David P. Tilton. "We believe that together, AtlantiCare and Geisinger can broaden innovation and improve the quality, experience, and value for our patients and the communities we serve." In a conversation with Mr. Tilton, he elaborated on how AtlantiCare has been planning for this transformation of health care and the future. What do you mean when you say "transformation of health care" and what does this letter of intent mean for AtlantiCare? Over the last decade, we began developing new models of care aimed at providing more value to our community. Over the last 18 months, we have used Category 2 [the strategic planning category of the Criteria] to evaluate our readiness to be accountable for the health of populations in our region and to develop and implement our population health strategy. We looked at the needs of our community, the evolving roles of our care team, and the ever-changing national health care environment. We made a strategic decision to focus on population health management and determined the need for a partner in order to succeed. We looked for a partner with a proven track record whose culture is compatible with AtlantiCare’s. Geisinger Health System proved to be the most likely candidate. Population health management is a significant strategic shift in the health care model from fee-for-service, in which the greater the volume, the more the health care organization is paid. We believe that the fee-for-service model is becoming obsolete. Instead, we plan to create greater value for health care patients and other customers with a value-based business model, one in which the organization is compensated for services provided and outcomes achieved. The health care organization becomes accountable for services. How is this move beneficial, especially in terms of innovation and value, for AtlantiCare and its patients, other customers, and stakeholders? Consider that the health care field in America is like a strong running river, and we are trying to shift the river’s flow to a different direction. What customers and businesses are saying and the Affordable Care Act is signaling is that health care must move in a different direction. Across the nation, the challenge is that health care is not always affordable or producing the outcomes required. The overall population and business community demand a new approach. Episodic care is not producing major value. AtlantiCare decided to take an intelligent risk to change our business model. It’s kind of strange because we are a very strong organization. We continue to perform solidly. All of our measures are solid. This was a big, thoughtful shift in how we deliver care. Did AtlantiCare use the Baldrige Health Care Criteria during this opportunity? Does it still use the Criteria? The Criteria still live strongly at AtlantiCare. We think about what our future Organizational Profile will be and that fuels our vision. The Criteria are not something we occasionally use; they are embedded in our culture, our work, in all we do. We use the Criteria to determine our path to the future, as well as to design and evaluate our key services and daily operations. All of our work and planning are targeted toward our vision of building healthy communities well into the future, and all of our work is rooted in the Criteria. This is especially important because we believe that AtlantiCare and all health care organizations will experience some choppy waters with the transformation of the entire field of health care. What has AtlantiCare learned and/or implemented during its Baldrige journey that led to improvements? One of the things that came out of AtlantiCare’s Baldrige improvement journey was more effective strategic planning.That discipline is serving us well. What we have also learned is the importance of real-time communication with our board, physicians and staff, and community so that they can all connect with the work we do and with our goals. We continue to enhance communication-even more so this past year. Be it internally or externally, with traditional or new media, face-to-face or other venues, we know we have to successfully communicate in many ways to reach the various communities we serve. We invite feedback, thoughts, and observations. We have been studying this transformation in health care over the past four years and sharing information and what we’ve learned throughout AtlantiCare, so that all stakeholders can prepare for and participate in our future.  This communication is an important part of AtlantiCare’s incredible engagement work with staff, resulting in top-box employee engagement scores. How we relate to people is essential to our work in health care. Workforce engagement continues to be important in achieving goals, fostering innovation, and creating an outstanding patient experience. Given the current health care climate, how do you think that the Criteria might help or be used by other organizations? The Criteria are incredibly valuable. I think one of the things that has really helped us a great deal and could help other organizations is taking a look at writing an Organizational Profile and assessing your category one [leadership category of the Criteria] position. This helps you really think about who you are as an organization, how visionary your leaders are, where you want to be three-to-five years down the road, what relationship you want to have with your staff, customers, community, etc. The future is not going to be an extension of the past. Difficult journeys require innovation, agility, and the ability to pivot quickly. Having the Baldrige framework surrounding and guiding you and using it as a way to improve performance, is extremely effective. The language and thinking that the Baldrige Criteria bring to you really can provide great overall benefit for any organization.

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey Faced with limited resources, many health care administrators ask themselves whether to invest in Magnet or in the Baldrige Health Care Criteria for Performance Excellence. Is one more dispensable than the other? Magnet designation, now operated by the American Nurses Credentialing Center, was approved for creation by the American Nurses Association in 1990. Today, Magnet is used as a way of recognizing hospitals that offer both excellent nursing care and an environment supportive of nurses-based on the characteristics of health care organizations that excel in recruitment and retention of registered nurses. In 1998, Congress authorized the participation of health care organizations in the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards, the nation’s highest Presidential honor for organizational excellence. With funding originally from the Veterans Administration, the Health Care Criteria were published to provide a framework for organizations to examine all parts of their management systems and improve processes and results, from results related to leadership and the workforce to customers, operations, and strategies. The Health Care Criteria were based on the best practices and ideas learned from business organizations that had contributed to the Baldrige Award since 1987. I asked Donna Poduska, chief nursing officer of Poudre Valley Health System, who is speaking at the 26th Annual Quest for Excellence Conference, and Priscilla Nuwash, system director for performance excellence of University of Colorado Health, about their presentation that focuses on using Baldrige and Magnet together. What are three reasons that a hospital might find value in implementing both Baldrige and Magnet principles? Baldrige and Magnet complement each other in creating a successful organization. Both are based on quality, innovation, and the pursuit of areas for improvement, and Magnet has components that integrate with the areas to address in the Baldrige Criteria. Although they complement and integrate with the other, each also addresses areas that the other does not. Together, they can create an exceptional organization. At times, different parts of the organization may not work together as a system; the value of using the Baldrige Criteria and Magnet together is that you are able to identify the best approach from each and deploy that throughout the organization. The Baldrige Criteria and Magnet succeed through engaging the workforce. Differing segments of the workforce have differing key elements that engage them. The value of using Magnet and the Baldrige Criteria together is that they produce professional work environments that address key elements for engaging everyone in the workforce.  What are some tips for using them together? Emphasize that both are grounded in what is best for the patient, which creates purpose and pride in the workforce. Focus on the concept that both the Baldrige Criteria and Magnet are based on evidence-based practice; they learn from each other. Both the Baldrige Criteria and Magnet are based on a foundation of having structure, process, and outcomes. Those three premises work together for both the Baldrige Criteria and Magnet. When developing committee structure, capitalize on your existing committees. Use one process improvement methodology when making improvements identified by the Baldrige Criteria and by Magnet. Then involve nursing and non-nursing staff in both to get the benefit of differing perspectives. Crosswalk your responses in applications for both Magnet and the Baldrige Award. Crosswalks are cost effective and are an additional way to identify best practices. What else might folks learn at your Quest for Excellence session? Donna will present a crosswalk visual of Magnet and the Baldrige Criteria and show how the components of Magnet and the Criteria are indispensable for an organization’s performance excellence journey. For more information, attend Poudre Valley Health System’s special presentation, "How Baldrige and Magnet Are Successful Together," at the Baldrige Program’s Quest for Excellence® Conference in Baltimore, Maryland.

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey Recently, the publishers of Quality Digest conducted a live interview with Janet Wagner, CEO of Baldrige Award-winning Sutter Davis Hospital, and Bob Fangmeyer, director of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program. The interview brought out some behind-the-scenes reflections and insights on the use of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, including why the Criteria are so suited to health care organizations but also to other organizations that have a strong sense of purpose and mission. Wagner also shared some "ah-ha" moments for the nonprofit, 48-bed acute care hospital. Following are some highlights of questions discussed and answered. Why are the Baldrige Criteria of such interest in the health care industry? Wagner said she sees a natural link between hospitals who want to improve and sustain world-class results and use of the Baldrige Health Care Criteria. "Baldrige offers a framework for sustainable results and a sustainable organization, and health care right now is in the news every day and our results are being looked at," she said. "Consumers are getting smarter, so this framework offers a lot to a leadership team in terms of being successful and competitive." She added that the Baldrige Criteria offer questions in a framework format that allows leadership teams to self-assess their own organizations. "[The framework] leads to a path of focus for the leadership team and that has served us at Sutter Davis Hospital at staying on track, focused, and getting results." Fangmeyer acknowledged that health care organizations have three-often conflicting-goals: improving patient safety, improving health care outcomes, and reducing costs. "It’s the application of our framework that lets organizations manage themselves from a systems perspective rather than sub-optimizing these areas," he said. "Hospitals in particular have seen a lot of improvement in their outcomes." What about use of the Baldrige Criteria in other industries? Fangmeyer said that organizations with a strong sense of purpose and mission tend to do better when applying an improvement strategy and are naturally more attracted to the Baldrige Criteria. "The framework and processes of Baldrige help an organization stay focused and really achieve their goals and their mission. When you have that strong focus and strong sense of purpose, Baldrige really does fit well within the organization’s efforts," he said. What did you learn during your Baldrige journey? Wagner said that year after year, Sutter Davis Hospital applied for Baldrige feedback at either state or national levels and "learned very quickly how to improve results, how to course correct, and then how to sustain results. And for me as a leader, I would say that’s probably one of the most important things. That framework, along with the site visits and the feedback, really focuses you on narrowing down and being able to prioritize those things, those behaviors, those systems, those processes that lead to consistent results. For us, [Baldrige] was a very good fit and energized us to do better." Wagner added that while learning to course correct rapidly was very valuable, one of the most beneficial parts of Sutter Davis Hospital’s journey was getting leadership team members comfortable in being transparent in getting and discussing results, and then having the Baldrige examiners come in and validate that they were on the right track. Sutter Davis Hospital also sent staff members to examiner training, either at state or national levels,  giving them an opportunity to view management from different vantage points. "When we sent them to examiner training, they had to step back and look at the Criteria from a different view point and that was insightful," Wagner said. Staff members learned "a different skill set, and this gave us a chance to look at our own organization without being defensive." Wagner said the biggest "ah-ha" moment for Sutter Davis leadership team members was when they learned the Baldrige "ADLI" and "LeTCI" approaches to reviewing processes that considered approach, deployment, integration, and learning and reviewing results that considered levels, trends, comparisons, and integration. "When [leadership team members] started to look at mature results through the Baldrige process, we added some depth and breadth to our own results and how we trended results, correlated, and segmented them. . . . [This approach] really propelled them to a different level of leadership." What’s the value of a Baldrige journey? "Oftentimes, leaders have blind shots that they don’t realize that they’re not paying enough attention to and that’s one thing that the Criteria do for organizations," Fangmeyer said. "[The Criteria] help ensure that you are paying attention to all of those things that will [lead to] sustainability, that [lead to] outstanding results. . . . Having your leadership team review the Criteria questions really can open your eyes, even at a very basic, self-assessment level." Mike Richman, publisher of Quality Digest, added, "Baldrige has become a highly sought-after prize. Naturally for the winners, recognition as a world-class organization for performance excellence and quality is a great reward, but any organization that has ever pursued the Baldrige at the national level or even one of the many state quality awards based on the Baldrige Criteria will tell you that it’s the journey that counts. Organizations that take the lessons of continuous improvement to heart will reap the true rewards of that journey. Customers and the American economy in general are the ultimate beneficiaries." The complete 30-minute interview can be found on YouTube.

Posted by Christine Schaefer Baldrige Award winners receive a lot of attention every year, but did you know that two health care organizations earned recognition for category-level best practices as part of last year’s award process? Both organizations—Duke University Hospital of Durham, North Carolina, and Hill Country Memorial, of Fredericksburg, Texas—were chosen for their leadership practices in category 1 of the Health Care Criteria for Performance Excellence. As noted before on Blogrige, to be considered by the Baldrige judges for Category Best Practice recognition, organizations must have received a site visit as part of the annual Baldrige Award process and demonstrated outstanding practices in one or more of the first six categories of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. Such recognition requires strong processes and results related to those processes as well as good performance across the other items. The Panel of Judges noted that both organizations have strong leadership systems. They noted that Duke University Hospital’s leadership system was tied to its performance management system and that Hill County Memorial has both strong leadership development and a strong community connection. Along with the 2013 Baldrige Award winners, these two organizations are expected to present on their recognized best practices at the Baldrige Program’s Quest for Excellence® conference in Baltimore in April. So if you really want to learn what is so great about these organizations, mark your calendar and attend their presentations. Let their examples inspire organizations of every size and sector to begin charting or continue trekking on a path to excellence.

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey 2012 Baldrige Award recipient North Mississippi Health Services (NMHS) is now inviting its physicians to apply for NMHS’s 2014 Physician Leadership Institute to provide an opportunity for the physicians to gain a greater understanding of the health care system, its mission, and its actual operation. Along the way, the physicians will also acquire additional skill sets in the areas of leadership, finance, strategic planning, operations, and the medico-legal aspects of health care. Such training, which will be held over two evenings per month for six months, is no small investment in resources for the system or in time for the physicians. So what’s the value for the system and physicians? Might such an investment be valuable for other health systems, too? I asked Dr. Brian Condit, director of NMHS’s Physician Leadership Institute, who will be speaking on such training at the upcoming Quest for Excellence Conference, and Beth Frick, director of NMHS’s Education Department, what they have learned from leadership training for physicians. What does your physician leadership training accomplish? Develops engaged, informed, and connected physicians for leadership roles Creates a hothouse for innovative ideas for care improvement Builds a group of positive change agents for clinical integration What are three tips to inspire physicians to invest time in leadership training? Have a physician champion who is a trusted peer recruit physicians within the organization. Emphasize the mission of improving patient care and the increased personal effectiveness of the leadership-trained individual to make a positive difference. Have physicians see that previously trained physicians behave differently and have demonstrated success and recognition as a result of their training. What else will folks learn at your session? How to develop an excellent curriculum at minimal cost by leveraging internal assets rather than expensive external resources For more information, attend NMHS’s special presentation, "Physician Leadership Training," at the Baldrige Program’s Quest for Excellence® Conference in Baltimore, Maryland.

Posted by Christine Schaefer In 2005, Richland College of Dallas, Texas, attained the distinction of being the first community college in the country to be named a Baldrige Award winner. Nearly a decade later, the institution, part of the Dallas County Community College District, continues to use the Baldrige Education Criteria for Performance Excellence to drive improvements, innovation, and excellence. Richland College students interact with an instructor. According to Fonda Vera, executive dean for planning, research, effectiveness, and development, Richland College today finds value in Baldrige "by supporting employees as examiners; by staying abreast of changes to the Criteria and incorporating those changes into how we work; and, most important, by continuing the discipline of our measurement systems (both overall and departmental)." In a presentation during the Baldrige Program’s Quest for Excellence® Conference next month, Vera and her colleague Bao Huynh, director of institutional effectiveness, will discuss the college’s Criteria-based practices in relation to measuring its performance through a comprehensive system. They’ll address considerations such as how to choose the best measures, what those measures tell you about the organization’s performance, and next steps after selecting measures and tracking data for them. In the meantime, Vera shared the following information in response to our questions. What are a few reasons that education institutions can find value in investing in a Baldrige-based performance measurement system? The three greatest benefits that a Baldrige-based performance measurement system provides are focus, framework, and discipline. The Criteria can guide institutions through non-prescriptive questions to clearly define what is important or key to the organization. Once what is key is determined, that should help the organization make a myriad of other decisions especially in times of uncertainty. The performance measurement system creates a strategic framework that helps the organization decide where and how to innovate and to determine intelligent risks. The discipline of using data to avoid the tendency of relying upon opinion or whim helps institutions to make continuous meaningful progress towards their goals. What are your top tips for using Baldrige principles to support performance measurement and improvement? 1.       Design a system for measurement that is repeatable and sustainable (Approach). 2.      Involve all key groups in development and share the results widely (Deploy).  3.      Make calm, clear-headed decisions based on the data analysis and regularly evaluate the effectiveness of the process itself (Learn). 4.      Align the measurement system with the organization’s mission, vision, values, and key work processes (Integrate). What else might participants learn at your upcoming presentation? Participants will learn why it can be useful to regularly entertain the thought of failure. Building productive paranoia into a measurement system can help an organization to better prepare in good times and make calm, clear-headed decisions in bad times. For more information, attend the district’s presentation, "How to Create a Comprehensive Institutional Measurement System," at the Baldrige Program’s Quest for Excellence® Conference in Baltimore, Maryland on Monday, April 7.

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey In 1994, Rosabeth Kanter-Ernest L. Arbuckle professor, Harvard Business School, and chair and director, Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative-was an overseer for the Baldrige National Quality Program. Now, twenty years later, her leadership experiences have come full circle back to Baldrige, as she will be the Monday morning keynote speaker at the Quest for Excellence® Conference on April 7.  Her presentation is entitled Big Leadership—How to Ensure the Impact You Want. The role of the Baldrige Board of Overseers is to suggest improvements to the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and function as an advisory committee for the Baldrige Program, reporting to the director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. In Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence, Dr. Kanter wrote that since 1987 and the advent of the Baldrige Award "to encourage American companies to examine their practices, benchmark against the best companies, and make necessary changes to become leaner, faster, and more customer-oriented, with fact-based decisions and responsiveness to multiple stakeholders, all in pursuit of zero defects and high performance. . . . The Baldrige Program has itself evolved to add more variables that have become critical to effectiveness in an intensely competitive global information economy. There is a high premium for innovation, the faster the better, as well as the ability to continuously upgrade products and processes." In terms of how the global economy and the leadership needs of American organizations have changed today, she wrote, "This context makes the Baldrige Performance Criteria more necessary and appropriate than ever. Continuous improvement is not merely a good thing for a handful of companies but a survival strategy for every organization—the only way to create organizations capable of rapid adjustment to rising standards and changing conditions." Dr. Kanter, who specializes in strategy, innovation, and leadership for change, has been repeatedly named to lists of the "50 most powerful women in the world" (Times of London) and the "50 most influential business thinkers in the world" (Thinkers 50). Through teaching, writing, and direct consultation to major corporations and governments, Kanter has guided leaders worldwide. She wrote, "[The] Baldrige Criteria can help organizations assess and improve their performance, becoming more sophisticated about how to align all of their processes to achieve desired results. That is important not only to the success of manufacturing and service enterprises but also sectors such as health care and education which are vital to the future of the economy and the well-being of society. . . . The Baldrige Award is given to only a few of the applicants because they meet the highest standards. But in a sense, every organization that uses the Baldrige Criteria for self-study and change can turn out to be a winner due to their increased ability to learn, adapt, innovate, and achieve excellence." Twenty years after serving as a Baldrige overseers, Dr. Kanter plans to illustrate for Quest for Excellence audience members how purpose-based companies and institutions organize for impact, as well as the leadership skills and sensibilities that help them achieve greatness. "The Baldrige quest for excellence is a valuable step on a journey toward high-impact goals that make a difference as an organization serves all of its stakeholders and society," Dr. Kanter said.

Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon In just a few short weeks, at the Quest for Excellence conference, we will be graduating the third cohort and initiating the fourth cohort of Baldrige Executive Fellows. Once again this year, it has been a great experience for the Fellows and those of us privileged to work with them. The Fellows Program is a year-long exposure to Baldrige for current and rising senior executives. During that year they are exposed to senior executives of Baldrige award-winning organizations, learn from each other, and work on a strategically significant capstone project that will benefit their organization or business. The current cohort met most recently in January at the Ritz-Carlton in Pentagon City, VA.  Aside from experiencing Ritz-Carlton hospitality firsthand, Fellows had the opportunity to interact with both Ritz-Carlton leadership and leaders from K&N Management, a small business Baldrige Award winner. Our topics at this meeting were customer and workforce focus. I thought I would share a few short sound bites from that meeting for you to ponder: "If I am listened to, I am engaged." "Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care." "From the outside it appears effortless, from the inside everything is intentional." "Don’t create leaders who are toothless tigers, a lot of roaring and no bite." These are good sound bites to challenge your own organizations and its leaders. Do you use these ideas as guidance in your own organization? They certainly reflect concepts within the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. What about having a stand-up 15-minute meeting on each of these statements and brainstorm how your organization does or should address each of them. If you want to hear more pearls of wisdom or meet some of the Baldrige Fellows, join us at the Quest for Excellence conference on April 6-9, 2014 in Baltimore. Your biggest challenge will be deciding which nuggets to pursue when you return home to your organization!

Posted by Christine Schaefer When Montgomery County Public Schools earned a Baldrige Award four years ago, it became the largest and most culturally diverse school district in the nation to have yet achieved the prestigious honor. Recently, staff members of the district shared how they continue to use processes based on the Baldrige Education Criteria for Performance Excellence to prepare students for future employment—including "jobs that do not exist today" but may be important tomorrow in a world of innovation and economic changes. Following are excerpts from a virtual interview with Rose Ann Schwartz, a staff development teacher, and Dr. LaVerne Kimball, an associate superintendent of the district. What are a few reasons that a school district can find value in implementing the Baldrige framework today? With limited resources, it is vital to work smarter, not harder. Resources must be aligned with goals.  Baldrige does this. For example, the framework helps us implement a strategic plan that integrates our key competency areas of academic excellence, creative problem solving, and social emotional learning. And we use our school improvement plan to drive what we do and how we allocate our resources. With this framework in place, Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) maintains a focus on quality, rigor, and accountability. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) set the learning goals and define the knowledge and skills students should master to be college- and career-ready. By implementing the Baldrige Criteria, your school district is able to pinpoint organizational strengths and tools for implementing the curriculum, tracking outcomes, and identifying opportunities for improvement. How do you use Baldrige processes to support your district’s adoption of the CCSS? CCSS needs to be part of a comprehensive approach to support rigorous student learning, and the Baldrige Criteria serve as a comprehensive framework for performance excellence. The framework focuses on results and requires management by fact and helps an organization stay customer- and market-focused. CCSS supports the expectation that students take ownership of their own learning. So students should be able to defend and justify their responses through multiple solution paths; frame solutions in context; identify variables and interpret results; choose appropriate learning tools; identify structure for their task; identify most efficient solutions to a task; and make connections to prior knowledge. We use a collaborative planning process to ensure that we are implementing the curriculum across our system systematically. Here are our process steps, with questions we address at each one: 1.       Plan: What is the indicator or standard asking our students to do? What are the difficult points for teachers?  Students? What are the connections to prior/future learning? How will the thinking and academic skills be addressed? 2.      Do: What is acceptable evidence of proficiency with the indicator?What is the sequence of learning? How will we identify ways instruction can be adjusted to meet the needs of all learners? 3.      Study:  How will we know students are learning it? Review data points around multiple pathways. 4.      Act: What do we do if they already know it? What do we do if they do not learn it? Additional insights to share? The thinking and academic skills that we are helping students build in MCPS align with the CCSS emphasis on the development of critical skills; for instance, problem solving, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity are vital to students’ future success in college and workplaces. The skills we are building to prepare students for future work also include intellectual risk taking, collaboration, synthesis, persistence, analysis, evaluation, fluency, flexibility, elaboration, and metacognition. For more information, attend the district’s presentation, "Using Baldrige to Implement the Common Core," at the Baldrige Program’s Quest for Excellence® Conference in Baltimore, Maryland on Tuesday, April 8.