Posted by Christine Schaefer Pewaukee School District Superintendent JoAnn Sternke likened her small organization’s persistence on its journey to excellence to that of the small engine in The Little Engine That Could, as she spoke during the 26th Annual Quest for Excellence Conference®. The beloved children’s book, she noted, highlights the "tenacity and persistence" of the little engine that helps the train that breaks down: "That’s us … we’re a … small little school district. I hope our story inspires all of the small organizations, in this room and not in this room, because if you think you can, and you employ the principles of Baldrige with that same level of perseverance, you really can achieve great things." "We did it with a can-do attitude and a love of our mission," Sternke said of her district’s journey to reach the level of excellence that enabled it to earn the 2013 Baldrige Award. She recounted how Pewaukee’s journey to excellence began in 2007, a year after she was first handed a Criteria for Performance Excellence booklet from a member of her district’s board of education. Pewaukee School District Superintendent JoAnn Sternke, speaking at the Baldrige Award ceremony on April 6, 2014. Photo by Eddie Arrossi. Sternke said she made a commitment to writing a Baldrige application within a year and to ensuring that the district’s leadership team would be trained as Baldrige examiners. In 2007, the district submitted its first award application to the Wisconsin Center for Performance Excellence (an Alliance for Performance Excellence member and state partner of the national Baldrige Performance Excellence Program). The Wisconsin program provided "wonderful feedback," said Sternke, and the district used the feedback report to work on improving its processes and results. "I loved the Criteria right from the start," said Sternke, citing how "it could be used in any sector." She added, "I think that education is sometimes too myopic looking inside to fix problems as opposed to looking outside." "I also love that the Criteria would work for everyone in our organization," she said. "Whether you are our director of buildings and grounds or you are our middle school principal, you can talk the same language of improvement at the table using the Criteria." She said the Organizational Profile of the Criteria proved valuable in the early stages of Pewaukee’s Baldrige journey because the prefatory self-assessment questions "offered an opportunity to get to know ourselves." Sternke named three areas of focus for the district today as it prepares students for the future: (1) student engagement in learning, (2) higher student achievement, and (3) student citizenship (which Sternke described as "making sure that we graduate good people"). She also shared these five keys to improvement for the district’s leadership system: 1.       People: Sternke described the aim as bringing on employees who are mission-driven and then engaging and training them to put the mission into action. 2.      Plans: Sternke pointed out how the district has used strategic planning since 1992 but has gotten better at it over the years as it has used Baldrige feedback to improve its strategic planning process. 3.      Results: Sternke noted how the district has gotten better at using data to make improvements and using measurement as a process. 4.      Processes: The Pewaukee district uses Plan, Do, Study, Act as its improvement methodology. "Ultimately we learned we had to improve our processes to get better," said Sternke. 5.      Innovation: Sternke described the "paradoxical secret" that came as a surprise during Pewaukee’s Baldrige journey: "By using a systems approach which some people would find constraining, it ultimately allowed us to think more freely and come up with innovations in our delivery model, not only for transportation and facilities, but for the very instruction that we provide to students," she said. "So it wasn’t just the best way to improve results; it actually got us better as a whole organization." The district is now seen as an innovation center for its use of technology, she said. She offered these answers to the question, Why Baldrige? ·         "Because before we used [the Baldrige Criteria], we were hard-working, but now we’re more effective and efficient." ·         "Because [Baldrige] allowed us to leverage our strength in planning and get better to reach new heights of achievement." ·         "Because [Baldrige] allows us to make sure that we are using results to drive improvement." ·         "Because by using a systematic approach, we became more innovative." Pewaukee School District is located in southeastern Wisconsin 20 miles west of Milwaukee. During Sternke’s tenure as superintendent since 2001, she has overseen several program improvements to increase student achievement. These include a nationally recognized initiative that provides laptop computers for every student in grades 5 through 12, a four-year-old kindergarten program, foreign language instruction in elementary grades, advanced course offerings for high school students with Northwestern University, and increased graduation requirements for high school students. Noteworthy results that the district has improved in recent years include a high school graduation rate of over 97%, one of the highest in the state of Wisconsin; and an increase in the proportion of high school graduates who go on to college, to over 90% today.

Posted by Christine Schaefer The visionary leader of the first health care organization to receive a Baldrige Award in 2002 still credits a 1999 feedback report for helping her organization become exceptional. "The feedback was humbling at the very least, but helpful, insightful, and transformative," said Sister Mary Jean Ryan, former president and CEO of SSM Health Care and now board chair. The organization’s first Baldrige feedback report, she said yesterday, provided "the clarity and focus we desperately needed to move our organization closer to exceptional." Sister Mary Jean Ryan Sister Mary Jean described pivotal events in SSM Health Care’s journey to excellence during her keynote address at the Baldrige Program’s 26th Quest for Excellence Conference in Baltimore. She noted that her organization’s 1999 Baldrige feedback report spurred the organization to reconsider how it defined exceptional in relation to its performance, particularly the excellent health care results it aspired to achieve. The feedback report pointed out that the organization’s aim of providing "exceptional health care services" was at odds with its use of average results for performance comparisons. In defining exceptional performance in response to the feedback, the organization developed a focused approach to goal setting in each of these areas: satisfaction (of patients, employees, and physicians), clinical and safety outcomes, and financial performance. It then began to compare itself to best-performing organizations as it sought to improve and excel. Sister Mary Jean offered additional insights on excellence through inspirational stories. She described the example of her religious order’s five original sisters in America, who survived great challenges in the 19th century as they began their ministry in St. Louis. Their example provided the legacy of caring for the work of SSM Health Care today and "is the reason I was so demanding when I was a CEO," said Sister Mary Jean. "You see, it was up to me to ensure that the 24,000 employees, 5,800-plus physicians, and 3,000 volunteers of SSM Health Care knew that they had to deliver exceptional health care to every single patient." She added, "If you remember only one thing from my remarks, I hope it is this: Our success as an organization is not the exclusive right of executives or managers." She recalled that when she became president and CEO of SSM Health Care in 1986, she saw "an organization that was only slightly better than average." She found this unacceptable. Instead, she looked for the same "potential for greatness" in the organization that her religious order had taught her to look for and cultivate in individuals. "We were not as good as we could or should be," she said of the organization. "Instead of constantly seeking to improve, people seemed to be satisfied with the way things were," she added. "We were pleased to say that we were as good as the national average." But complacency with the status quo began to change as the organization began to improve its processes and adopted the Baldrige framework. "I can say without reservation that because of Baldrige we are much closer to achieving our mission today than ever before," she said. "And that equates to being a better organization than we were when we began our quality journey."

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey To focus leadership on the things that really matter-that was the foundation of Dr. Rosabeth Moss Kanter‘s five mantras, shared with the audience at the 26th Annual Quest for Excellence® Conference in Baltimore, Md. Kanter, who served on the Baldrige Board of Overseers when health care and education were added to the eligibility categories of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, gave advice to leaders on "how to ensure the impact you want." Kanter’s favorite mantras are phrases, ideas, and concepts that she writes about and teaches at Harvard Business School. Following are the first two of five favorite mantras that she presented in her keynote address. #1 Think Outside the Building Kanter said, "Many people know the famous phrase ‘think outside the box,’ but the box just isn’t big enough . . . and that’s true in every sector because the business is not just its financial performance or even its customer metrics." Kanter suggested that leaders, "Get out of the building to where the people are. Thinking outside the building is the first imperative for impact." In New Orleans after hurricane Katrina, buildings for schools and hospitals had to be rebuilt, but instead of building the full-service central hospital, mobile clinics were built to bring the care to where the people were and schools became community gathering points. These are "connections across problems," she said, and there is a need for innovative thinkers to think outside structures to solve problems across disciplines and establishments. An example of "thinking outside the building," she said, is an educational innovation that was initiated by IBM: a six-year high school in Brooklyn, NY, called Pathways in Technology Early College High School. IBM, which was concerned about the state of education, worked closely with the public system, creating a collaboration among the K-12 school, the community college, and the corporation. Students graduate with a high school diploma, an associate’s degree, and a job interview. The city of Chicago is now opening five schools following this model, the city of New York is putting in more, and the state of New York is starting 16. Such an innovation solves "multiple problems simultaneously, of connections to employers, skills that are needed, high academic performance, keeping kids in school," she said. This style of thinking is "a whole new concept. It’s not just do what we’re doing even better. . . . but think about how you’re going to connect assets that exist outside the building, in the community, as other resources to get things done." Another example is a program that Kanter started with two colleagues called the Advanced Leadership Initiative because they realized there’s an opportunity in higher education for experienced leaders transitioning from their income-generating years to their next years of service. "Surrounding us are all types of opportunities," Kanter added. #2 Act Bigger Than You Are "This means act as though you can take on big problems," she said. What creates jobs is imagination, she said, "the ability to imagine something bigger and set out to do it." Kanter cited the example of Dr. Donald Berwick founding a small nonprofit-the Institute for Healthcare Improvement-to change all of health care with campaigns to save and protect lives. As one individual, Berwick thought big ideas about improving patient safety, influenced by Baldrige and the quality movement, Kanter said. He leveraged others to take part in the campaign. "The greatest opportunities for innovation come from the gaps, the things we’re not seeing." "Think bigger!" she said. "I’m frustrated sometimes by people who have it all there and yet don’t think bigger. . . . Think about where you could ultimately be. . . . Go for the big prize. Stand as equals with anybody." She added, "One thing that I love about the Baldrige and always have is . . .  the obligation of winners to teach others," she said. "That’s another way of encouraging others to think bigger. And now the mission is getting the world to do what you do and not think of it as . . . competition."

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey In a keynote address at the Baldrige Program’s recent Quest for Excellence® Conference, Dr. Rosabeth Moss Kanter shared key insights in the form of five of her favorite mantras. Friday we shared the first two; following are the other three. #3 It Takes a Cross-Sector, Multistakeholder Coalition "It takes a village" is an African proverb, but according to Kanter, success today takes a "cross-sector, multistakeholder coalition." According to Kanter, at Harvard University Advanced Leadership meetings, dignified leaders who have served as CEOs, venture capitalists, hospital system CEOs, physicians, managing partners at law firms, and government cabinet members still have to be taught "to think across sectors, not to think adversarially about government versus business versus whatever . . . but really always think cross-sector multistakeholder—who has to be at the table, from outside the building, to think bigger, to solve problems?" As an example of such a coalition, Kanter described the city of Milwaukee’s success moving from an aging industrial city to a global water hub (one of three global water hubs in the world). Members from the community, including the business community, are collaborating to turn the infrastructure into one that focuses on what all of the declining industrial businesses had in common: water. Now Milwaukee businesses are making products and services leveraging water technology; a water council is redefining the city across industries; a graduate school is offering fresh water sciences; and entrepreneurs are turning abandoned factories into fish farms. In these factories, they are also growing sprouts as a healthy snack for Milwaukee’s school children. #4 It’s Not Easy "Kanter’s law," she said, "is that everything can look like a failure in the middle because when you are doing things that are new and different . . . there can be naysayers. . . . There are so many obstacles and road blocks on the journey that the difference between success and failure is how long you give it before you give up." A typical obstacle is forecasting problems, said Kanter. It’s difficult to know how long something is going to take and how much it is going to cost—something we all have a tendency to underestimate, she added. Kanter stressed persistence and willingness to deliver as characteristics of success. "We know a ton of things are going to happen to throw [you] off. . . . Sometimes it’s more important to do it better the second time because you can’t always the first time get it right," she said. The middles of new projects and initiatives can be tense times, she said, "you hit obstacles you didn’t know were there because you’ve never gone down that road before. . . . The middles are another time [to be] in touch with your cross-sector multistakeholder coalition." Kanter said that she loves small improvements, quick wings, but if change involves anything big (which she encourages), "you have to persist and persevere, you have to have continuity of leadership. . . . There has to be a really dedicated team, and I also go back to mission and purpose. If you don’t have a strong sense of why you’re doing this and whom you are doing this for, it’s way too easy to give up. And giving up is by definition a failure." #5 The Happiest People Solve the Most Difficult Problems "If you really want to motivate your staff," Kanter said, "it’s not by making the work easier but by making it more challenging." She said people seek out jobs in Silicon Valley and high-tech companies because they get to stretch, to learn new things, to have impact. "The happiest people I know, amazingly, miraculously, are working on things that seem intractable," she said. "Now they have to get over the sense of discouragement in the middle, but they have a sense of purpose, meaning, mastery, challenge, along with membership in community and a sense of meaning."

Posted by Christine Schaefer In a recent post here, we shared insights from Gallup strategist Dr. John Timmerman on achieving customer-focused excellence. In the interview, Timmerman pointed out that the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence provide "the holistic framework to assess all the dimensions of an organization required for driving excellence." Now let’s look at how Timmerman and others at Gallup have used the Baldrige framework in helping client organizations keep the "promise" of their brand in terms of the value perceived by their customers. In this September 2013 article in Gallup Business Journal, Timmerman and his Gallup colleague Stephen Shields state, "To deliver on its brand promise, the first thing a company must do is align all the elements that contribute to an exceptional and differentiated customer experience: customer knowledge, strategy, process design, human capital, measurement, and leadership. These elements are consistent with the well-known Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence." Timmerman and Shields conclude, "Operationalizing a brand promise isn’t easy and requires a holistic framework to ensure alignment from marketing to each moment of truth." Users of the Baldrige Criteria know of such a framework, and so does Timmerman. As he further shared in our interview, "We use the Baldrige framework at Gallup to teach organizations all the important factors required to delivering the brand promise."    He then noted, "In fact, I went through the Gallup research to develop an education consulting model to teach companies to deliver and execute their brand promise—because they create it on paper, but then it’s a very different thing to actually have employees activate it and have it come to light—and when we looked at all our companies’ best practices from the clients that we work with, they all naturally fell into the Baldrige framework." He added that clients’ best practices could be put in "buckets" encompassing "customer focus, leadership systems, strategy development and deployment, … human capital, process management design, and information and measurement." Timmerman and others at Gallup then developed a schematic (see below) using the Baldrige framework "as a way to frame up how to deliver a brand promise." Used with Permission We hope you have found this information helpful to your own organization’s current or potential future use of the Baldrige framework to improve its performance and excel. Please consider sharing your experiences with us.      

Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon For as long as the Baldrige Education Criteria for Performance Excellence have existed, and probably longer, educators have debated whether the student is the customer or the product. In a 2010 New York Times Opinion piece, a number of business school deans debated this question with some interesting observations. As a society, we have also questioned the roles of families as customers. But this blog post is about neither of those customer groups. It is about businesses in the school’s service area, an even less considered customer group. Consider this recent statistic: 96% of college provosts believe their students are prepared for the job market. That compares to 14% of the public, and 11% of business leaders. How can such a gap exist and persist? Probably because there is a lack of appropriate communication between colleges and business leaders. There is lots of communication about donations and recruiting on campus, but satisfaction with the education students receive? Complacency is almost certainly one culprit. Schools know the "important" subject matter and businesses know they have a significant role in training and developing new graduates. I suggest some questions for schools to start the dialog between business leaders and college provosts. The questions come from the Baldrige education criteria items on Voice of the Customer and Customer-Focused Results: How do you determine student and other customer satisfaction and engagement? How do you determine student and other customer dissatisfaction? How do your measurements capture actionable information to use in exceeding their expectations and securing their engagement for the long term? What are your current levels and trends in key measures of their satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and engagement? How would your Alma Mater respond?  

Posted by Christine Schaefer One of the strengths of Baldrige Award-winning Pewaukee School District today is its systematic process for strategic planning. But Pewaukee leaders and staff members readily admit that the mature process today represents a lot of progress. Twenty years ago, "we weren’t that good at strategic planning," said Brian Kammers, the vice president of the district’s board of education. "We got to the point of seeing it as a comprehensive process." In 1992, Pewaukee High School Principal Marty Van Hulle was involved in the district’s first strategic planning effort, working alongside "a handful" of board of education members and administrators. "It wasn’t necessarily strategic," he said of the early process. "We were blind squirrels looking for nuts." Kammers and Van Hulle presented the story, steps, and successes of the ever-improving process during the Baldrige Program’s recent Quest for Excellence® Conference in Baltimore. The district’s stepwise process for strategic planning today encompasses Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) methodology. At the end of the process, "we celebrate successes," said Kammers. The strategic plan reflects five key focus areas, which have not changed in recent years: teaching and learning, workforce engagement and development, communications and community engagement, technology, and facilities and operations. The district has staff members shepherd each of the areas of the strategic plan, and they act as process owners. "What we’re trying to do is to break up the plan into pieces" that can be acted upon by many individuals," said Van Hulle. He also explained how the plan is aligned at every level of the school district. Since, for example, Van Hulle as a principal sees the teaching and learning area as "my piece," he noted that a goal on which he has focused is to increase the percentage of college- and career-ready mathematics students from 55% to 70% by June 2014, an improvement of 15% over three years. The process, he added, "has put us all on the same page relative to the strategic goals of the plan." The strategic planning process ensures accountability at the building level through 90-day/quarterly updates in which each principal meets with the superintendent to present school-level progress on plans. Alignment and accountability at the teacher level, Van Hulle explained, is demonstrated through teacher plans in which they set growth targets and instructional strategies, including designating groups of students targeted for help. The entire district is involved in constant PDSA cycles of improvement, and a widely inclusive group of stakeholders (representing parents, students, teachers, other employees, citizens, school board members, local government officials, and partners and collaborators) gather annually during the planning phase. Data are reviewed by leaders each summer, and the strategic plan is updated annually in a formal process lasting one to five days. Pewaukee School District staff members and others gather for a strategic planning session. Photo used with the district’s permission. The school board is also focused on aligning and improving the strategic plan. As Kammers explained, every year board members "work on the strategic plan and make sure that the actions take place and that we make progress. We make sure that it flows down to every level of the organization." Van Hulle offered the following steps for other organizations that wish to proceed similarly to create a strategic plan: • Determine your values and goals (from mission) • Conduct a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis and an environmental scan. • Determine strategy areas and create action plans. • Publish and share the strategic plan with all. • Monitor and create accountability systems. The hard part is the monitoring and accountability systems, said Van Hulle. He pointed out that his district publicly posts the strategies and goals of its plan on its Web site. "The idea is to be very transparent about the work of the school district," he said. Results accomplished through strategic planning, Kammers noted, include the district’s high school graduation rate of over 97 percent today, significant improvement on a key college-readiness measure, and an average student ACT score of 23.7 today (compared to a national average of 21.1). Other benefits of the process, said Kammers, are that it "allows us to anticipate student and stakeholder needs" and become results-focused. The strategic planning process, he said, "has helped us focus on what really matters and keep an eye on the future."

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey Senior leaders at Baldrige Award recipient Sutter Davis Hospital (SDH) were recently asked how using the Baldrige Health Care Criteria for Performance Excellence helps to prepare their organization for the Affordable Care Act and the challenges that come with it. "Right now we prepare ourselves just by becoming more efficient and effective, making sure that the care provided along the continuum is at the right place at the right time . . . and having that appropriateness," answered SDH CEO Janet Wagner. "Probably the biggest gift from [our] Baldrige journey is process improvement and measurement. Improving our processes to become more efficient" is how the hospital is preparing for the unknowns surrounding the act and more people sign up for health care products. Deven Merchant, SDH’s chief medical executive, said, "The Baldrige framework has given us a wonderful opportunity to work on the conditions of care to be more affordable and to be more efficient in the care delivery to our community." In a recent blog at Core Values Partners, Steve George writes, "The implementation of the Affordable Care Act will stress a health care system that is already under the strain of an aging baby boomer population. . . . To help manage the rapidly approaching ‘new normal,’ high-performing hospitals and medical centers across the country are integrating the Baldrige model." George goes on to highlight benefits of the Baldrige model for health care: Robust strategic plans that reveal an organization’s key challenges and advantages, core competencies, risks to sustainability, blind spots, and ability to execute the plan Workforce engagement, including of physicians and staff focusing on patients, developing innovative approaches, and achieving the organization’s action plans More efficient and effective processes "Organizations that seek proven options for strengthening their management systems, especially at a time when those systems face growing pressure, turn to Baldrige because it addresses the entire system," said George. "It helps leaders identify the most critical areas to improve and take immediate actions to enhance performance. As the Baldrige model becomes integrated into the way organizations do business, leaders gain control over all of the elements that contribute to performance excellence." At SDH, senior leaders are attempting to gain that control. "Keeping a focus on the [Baldrige] framework will keep us on that steady road to the Affordable Care Act and to address the challenges," added Carolyn Campos, manager of the SDH Birthing Center. How is your health care organization preparing for the Affordable Care Act?

Posted by Christine Schaefer In a previous Blogrige post, we shared insights from Gallup Senior Strategist Dr. John Timmerman on achieving customer-focused excellence. In the interview, Timmerman pointed out that the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence provide "the holistic framework to assess all the dimensions of an organization required for operationalizing their brand promise." Now let’s look at how Timmerman has used the Baldrige framework in helping organizations keep the "promise" of their brand in terms of the value perceived by their customers. In this September 2013 article in Gallup Business Journal, Timmerman states, "To deliver on its brand promise, the first thing a company must do is align all the elements that contribute to an exceptional and differentiated customer experience: customer knowledge, strategy, process design, human capital, measurement, and leadership. These elements are consistent with the well-known Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence." In the Gallup Business Journal article, Timmerman also writes, "Operationalizing a brand promise isn’t easy and requires an integrated framework to ensure alignment from marketing to each moment of truth." Users of the Baldrige Criteria know of such a framework, and so does Timmerman. As he further shared in our interview, "I utilize the principles of the Baldrige framework to outline all the important factors that they need to deliver on their brand promise." He then noted, "In fact, I went through the Gallup research to develop an Executive Seminar to teach companies to deliver and execute their brand promise—because they create it on paper, but then it’s a very different thing to actually have employees activate it and have it come to light—and when we looked at all our companies’ best practices from the clients that we work with, they all naturally fell into the Baldrige framework." Using a vehicle analogy, Timmerman referred to the Baldrige Criteria items related to strategy, leadership, and customer knowledge as the "GPS of the Brand Promise Model" that defines the organizational direction. Whereas the human capital is the engine that delivers organizational horsepower, he said, process design defines the manufacturing style of the vehicle, and measurement provides the dashboard of critical measures. "Most organizations do a good job of managing a few of these criteria but few execute them all consistently well," he said. "That’s why many organizations swim in the sea of sameness, have flat customer engagement scores, and struggle with cultural transformation. They take a narrow program and not a holistic, systems view of the organization." Timmerman developed a schematic (see below) using the Baldrige framework "as a way to frame up how to deliver a brand promise." He noted that clients’ best practices could be put in "buckets" encompassing customer focus, leadership, strategy, human capital, process design, and measurement. With so many organizations trying to implement a customer experience program in a vacuum, he added, the framework illustrates that "all the wheels and sprockets of the model need to be calibrated in delivering a consistent brand promise."  Graphic from Gallup; used with permission. We hope you find this information helpful to your own organization’s current or future use of the Baldrige framework to improve performance and excel. Please consider sharing your experiences with us.

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey At recent question-and-answer panel discussions, Baldrige Award recipient senior leaders from Sutter Davis Hospital and Pewaukee School District fielded audience questions-from managing organizational change to overcoming the challenges that they faced in implementing the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. Following are some of their insights. How do you lead an organization that is changing its culture? Make sure people understand your mission so that they can both see it and live it. "Culture is a product of a thousand conversations"—keep the communication ongoing. Ensure that the culture is built on shared values. Understand that culture takes time to build. (CEO turnover can therefore be problematic.) Define your culture so that you can have expectations to which people are held accountable—and ensure that you do hold them accountable. Role model behaviors that define the culture. How do you promote innovation in your organization? As dramatic results can come from just one idea, plant the seeds of process improvement in all employees. Recognize employees with innovative ideas that lead to new value and demonstrate breakthrough results. Involve staff members at every level of the organization and ensure that they feel that their innovative ideas are heard. (Watch the "yeah, but" when someone brings a good idea forward.) Align goals with strategic objectives, so that all staff members know what they’re working toward. Encourage the sharing of best practices. Provide systems for time and collaboration so that good ideas can percolate. Put egos aside and realize that better ideas than yours may come from your teammates. Allow employees to do what they do best, and give them opportunities to do what they do best more. Build an environment of relationships and trust, where it is safe to bring ideas forward. How do you help frontline staff understand the Baldrige Criteria? Link people, results, plans, and processes. Build pride through results and accountability around department goals, so that employees can see their impact. Live the Criteria more than you talk about them. Explain to frontline staff members, including physicians, that the Baldrige journey is really about making their work easier, about getting better care to their patients, better products to their customers, and better learning for their students. How do you encourage engagement by your leadership team in continuous improvement and the Baldrige Criteria? Encourage personal commitment in a continuous improvement culture; orient new board members, leaders to such a culture. Embed the Baldrige Criteria framework as a management tool. Explain the specifics of the journey to physicians and others who may prefer a big-picture approach. Attend Baldrige break-out sessions, conferences, and training at state, regional, and national levels. Onboard senior leaders by giving them an overview of your continuous improvement journey and letting them know that the organization is serious about accountability. Make some quality approaches nonnegotiable. Hire for people that share the organization’s values. How do you win over naysayers to the Baldrige process? Point out the results achieved over time. Look at ways to overcome barriers as a team. Help people understand where they fit in, how processes work. They want to continue to learn, to continue to improve, but they need to know how they can have impact. Take the time to understand how various elements of Baldrige feedback reports received really do relate to the organization’s overall mission. For example, a Pewaukee senior leader said the district received a comment on tracking on-time school buses; at first glance, this comment did not appear to relate to learning and was dismissed. However, folks soon realized that students who were late were missing valuable learning time. How would you answer these questions?