Posted by Christine Schaefer   In the Baldrige Health Care Criteria for Performance Excellence, the Customer Focus category (category 3) asks how your organization engages its patients and other customers for long-term market­place success. The related self-assessment questions cover how your organization listens to the voice of the customer, builds relationships with patients and other customers, and uses patient and other customer information to improve and to identify opportunities for innovation. As the U.S. health care system undergoes major changes, what are some effective practices for engaging patients in new and challenging contexts? I recently spoke with a Baldrige examiner who responds to that question by drawing on both her professional expertise in business management and her personal experiences as the mother of a patient navigating the health care system for multiple surgeries. Randi Redmond Oster is now in her second year on the Baldrige Program’s Board of Examiners. For more than a decade, she was an engineer and executive with GE Capital. She specialized in new business development and earned Black Belt Six Sigma certification. Oster later applied her business knowledge and skills in her role as a patient advocate for her son as he underwent numerous surgeries. Randi Redmond Oster and her son, Gary Oster During those experiences, Oster saw numerous opportunities for health care providers to better engage patients and their families through information and tools to empower them. Today she works to educate hospitals and others on how to address such opportunities; she also has shared her insights in a book she wrote on empowering health care consumers. When Oster works with health care organizations now, she says she "helps them understand the patient perspective today and ways they can move forward by being responsive to the dynamic change that is happening." She pointed out three key developments that have changed the ways that health care organizations must focus on customers today: Consumers have higher deductibles. "Because they’re spending more money, they’re asking more questions," Oster observed. Consumers have access to more data on the performance of health care organizations and employees; for example, the Hospital Compare tool on the Medicare.gov site allows consumers to compare organizations on patient satisfaction measures. Consumers are exposed via news outlets and social media interactions to negative health outcomes via stories about medical procedures. This creates a challenge for the health care community in terms of the satisfaction and engagement of health care consumers. For example, whereas historically wait times were long for patients, health care organizations will risk consumer dissatisfaction for long wait times today. "The shift in health care is accelerating so quickly that [hospitals] are struggling to keep up," Oster said. The key question for executives of such organizations is, How do you position your organization for innovative changes at an accelerated pace? Oster sees the Baldrige framework’s category 3 as particularly valuable as health care providers must ensure high levels of patient satisfaction and engagement. After all, funders and customers alike are increasingly using those results to measure such organizations’ performance. She recounted a turning point in her work with a health care organization that "did not want to lose a patient to a competing hospital and risk not developing a long-term relationship with the customer." She recalled hospital executives, including the heads of nursing, patient experience, and quality, concluding, "We have to ‘wow’ patients." "Not only do such organizations have to meet medical needs," said Oster, "but they also need to figure out what patients need personally." The greatest challenge in doing so, she added, lies in the relatively short time a health care provider has to meet the patient’s manifold needs. During a typical 15-minute appointment with a patient, the doctor is in effect a data entry clerk (entering information from the appointment into an electronic health record) and required to listen. "It is hard to ‘wow’ patients if they feel rushed and as if they are merely a number representing data in a system," she said. Yet changing doctors and their behaviors can be "cumbersome and costly," said Oster. She concluded that organizations would do well to empower patients so that "they can maximize those 15 minutes with their doctor." For example, when her son was hospitalized, Oster kept a "feedback list" and put stars next to names of health care providers she felt did a good job. A few days after her son was discharged from the hospital, she sent a thank-you letter to the CEO of the hospital commending employees on her list. Later, when her son had to be readmitted for complications from surgery, she received words of thanks from nurses and other staff members as they shared that the CEO had read her thank-you letter to all employees. During her son’s second hospitalization, Oster felt she had developed a good relationship with many employees as a result of her feedback. She has since suggested other hospitals give all patients a similar feedback tool to support the customer relationship. "[Empowering patients] is how they can differentiate their organization from competitors in terms of patient satisfaction and engagement," she said. She noted that the second set of Baldrige Criteria questions on determining patient satisfaction and engagement (3.1[b]) are about determining satisfaction relative to competitors (3.1[b]2). As the leadership of one hospital realized, "If we don’t do well in satisfying customers, they’ll go somewhere else." Because of that potential to lose business, innovation in processes to build customer relationships is essential, said Oster. "My personal mission is to improve the health care system," she added. "I have a two-tier strategy—bottom-up is to educate people about the system; top-down is to use the Baldrige framework to explain to CEOs how to improve the system by helping them understand the consumer perspective."

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey Small businesses in Puerto Rico are becoming more competitive, more sustainable, more global, and many of them have Carmen Martí and the Baldrige Criteria to thank. For three years, the Puerto Rico Small Business and Technology Development Centers (PR-SBTDC) has been teaching the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence to small businesses on the island, with the intention to increase their competitiveness and help them succeed in a global marketplace. According to PR-SBTDC executive director, Carmen Martí, the Baldrige Competitiveness Program has been a resounding success, with more than 125 businesses, including 250 top-management executives, participating. And word about the value of the Baldrige model has been spreading among other small business development centers (SBDCs): 63 such centers, with a total of 1,100 U.S. offices, are adopting aspects of the program, said Martí. In addition, SBDCs in Central America are adopting Baldrige: "[In El Salvador] they have been inspired by the framework to grow their micro- and small businesses." The Baldrige Competitiveness Program Manuel Fernós of the Universidad Interamericana de P.R.; Carmen Martí; and Jorge Junquera of the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Co. Caribbean Business describes the program, which began in 2011, as an initiative to help Puerto Rico businesses establish standards of excellence and become more competitive using the Baldrige Criteria. The participant small businesses represent $307 million in sales and 11,614 jobs, according to PR-SBTDC’s 2012-2013 Annual Report. Participants who have implemented the Baldrige Criteria report "high-impact results," especially in the areas of leadership, sales, metrics, operations, human resources, workplace environment, financial results, and client satisfaction, said Martí. "[These participants] are evidence of the efficiency and effectiveness of [the Criteria’s] strategies and operational processes. . . . I guarantee that the Baldrige journey of learning best practices, as well as networking with peer entrepreneurs and Malcolm Baldrige National Quality awardees, will be exceptional and meaningful." The program includes eight, monthly, day-long sessions that focus on a theme within the Criteria; the participants are challenged to implement the theme in their own businesses. During the sessions, best practices are discussed (and in many cases adopted), and real-life examples are shared. In addition, at the end of each program, a successful case implementation of the Criteria is presented, and entrepreneurs share how the Baldrige Criteria helped them. Baldrige Competitiveness Program Participants Martí said that for many participants, "it has been an extraordinary experience to identify areas of opportunities for improvements in their own business models. As I say, [the small businesses use the Baldrige Criteria to] ‘put the house in order prior to growing and exporting your business.’" The Baldrige Competitiveness Program has "been a signature product for the Puerto Rican small business community, particularly in today’s challenging times," Martí said. "We have become very engaged in our business community using the Baldrige framework. . . . The PR-SBTDC completed its [own] accreditation process, based in the Baldrige Criteria concepts, with all standards met and multiple best practices, thanks to the knowledge and understanding of the Baldrige framework." Participant Examples Maximo Torres, of Maximo Solar Industries, in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, completed the Baldrige Competitiveness Program at the end of 2013, after almost two years of learning and getting involved with the Baldrige Criteria. Maximo Torres said that his biggest learning has been how to restructure his company for growth and to bring consistency to its various areas of operation; actions have included simple things like starting every staff meeting with a review of the mission and vision. He said Maximo Solar Industries, which manufactures, sells, and installs solar panels, is rebranding itself as a business renewal energy company and using the management framework of the Criteria as a guide. The framework has resulted in a new focus on customer relationship management, knowledge management, training, and process efficiency. "In all areas of the business, we’ve seen areas of improvement and will continue to do so," said Maximo Torres. "Business growth is double to what we have had last year. It’s a combination of efforts that have impacted us to restructure ourselves and manage the change. Growth can be a pain, a dangerous path. Having that knowledge from Baldrige and getting everyone in the company on the same page have helped us to be more focused on what we need to do." Maximo Torres said the biggest challenge for his company has been managing change and growth, as Maximo Solar Industries moves from servicing just the residential market to the commercial market, as well as to exporting to a global market. "There are so many programs out there for quality. We are familiar with ISO, Lean, but there has to be something more specific to manage the business and that’s Baldrige. It connects all of the parts of the business to quality," said Maximo Torres. "We are moving towards total consistency. We want to be the most proficient and excellent contractor not only on the island, but we look to expand to the international market. The next Baldrige steps are crucial for us. It definitely was a great decision to get involved [with the Baldrige Competitiveness Program]. We don’t want to be good; we want to be great, excellent. All of the examples from so many Baldrige Award recipients showed us what was possible, what was realistic. . . . Truly Baldrige is a key aspect to our success." "The Baldrige Criteria gave me new skills and knowledge to manage my business, resulting in the development of an integrated strategy improving the company’s marketing, sales, manufacturing, accounting, human resources, and strategic planning systems," said another program participant Eniel Torres, of Maga Foods in Sabana Grande, Puerto Rico. "Now I have measurements to manage the efficiency and performance of the company as a whole." Eniel Torres said he began as an entrepreneur with a popcorn machine and grew his business to become a manufacturer of gourmet vinaigrette for restaurants in Old San Juan. Maga Foods now manufactures cereals, pancakes, seasoning, and snacks and distributes these products throughout the United States and the Caribbean. A growth strategy guided by the Criteria has allowed the company to add new products and private labels for different establishments, leading to an increase of 10% in exports. Next Steps Beyond implementing Criteria strategies and best practices in their own organizations, Puerto Rico small businesses can also look to Texas for additional resources and support. Martí said the PR-SBTDC has partnered with the Quality Texas Foundation, a member of the Baldrige-based Alliance for Performance Excellence, to support small businesses. "At SBTDC, we are committed to supporting the growth of local enterprises. That’s why we have put all of our efforts into offering this important Baldrige model performance excellence program," Martí said. "We hope the seeds we have planted will bloom into tomorrow’s local multinational corporations." The PR-SBTDC began its next Baldrige Competitiveness Program on the island in spring 2014. "I hope [our success] will inspire other SBDC programs throughout the U.S. to become engaged in the Baldrige journey," added Martí. "SBDCs serve nearly 625,000 small businesses in the U.S. [Use of the Baldrige model] is a great opportunity to grow and become more competitive as a nation."

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey Last month, the ASQ Automotive Division named Geri Markley, executive director of Michigan Performance Excellence, as the 2013 Quality Professional of the Year. Geri Markley receives ASQ’s 2013 Quality Professional of the Year award. Markley said that Michigan Performance Excellence, a member of the Baldrige-based Alliance for Performance Excellence, was founded 20+ years ago by the largest organizations in Michigan-many of them related to auto manufacturing. "I’m thrilled to be recognized by the American Society for Quality’s Automotive Division," she said. "We strive to serve the entire Michigan community and all sectors, including manufacturing, service, small business, education, healthcare, and nonprofits. Our services are provided by teams of dedicated volunteers who want to see Michigan organizations compete and win. With their dedication and hours of support they have provided many organizations valuable feedback on how they can improve and produce better results for customers, employees, and owners." According to its website, the ASQ Automotive Division is committed to becoming the worldwide leader on quality issues related to the automotive industry; the division offers webinars, training, and other resources. Members include professionals from almost every discipline in the vehicle manufacturing and supplier business in the automotive, heavy-truck, off-highway, agricultural, industrial, and construction equipment industries. Markley said that as part of her award acceptance, she encouraged these members to re-engage with the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, which are validated best management practices, particularly as the future of the auto industry is evolving. The Baldrige Program has had exemplars from the automotive industry and manufacturing sector. For example, Baldrige Award recipient Park Place Lexus still uses the Criteria internally. The manufacturing sector page on the Baldrige website includes testimonials and other return-on-investment data. Baldrige 20/20 includes sections on manufacturing, which is discussed in both forewords. Steven Sessions of Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control was interviewed on how the Baldrige Criteria helped his organization manage its supply chain. Dave Brucks of Seagate Technology was interviewed on how the Baldrige Criteria helped his organization learn and implement best practices. The Made in America Foundation uses Baldrige to select the country’s best manufacturers. The automotive industry in Australia cites Baldrige. The Quality Professional of the Year Award was established to recognize individuals who have made significant contributions in leadership, managerial skills, and community services.

Posted by Christine Schaefer   What does a high-performing board of directors do? A McKinsey Quarterly article published in April described a progression in the scope of activities of governance boards reflecting higher levels of engagement. Authors Chinta Bhagat and Conor Kehoe wrote, "In performance management, … many boards start with a basic review of financial metrics. More involved boards add regular performance discussions with the CEO, and boards at still higher levels of engagement analyze leading indicators and aspire to review robust nonfinancial metrics." A February 2014 article from the McKinsey Quarterly makes a case for more involvement by governance boards in an organization’s long-term strategy: "The best boards act as effective coaches and sparring partners for the top team," authors Christian Casal and Christian Caspar wrote. "The challenge is to build processes that help companies tap the accumulated expertise of the board as they chart the way ahead." Want to assess the performance of your board of directors? Interested in advancing the board’s role in supporting the performance of the entire organization? If so, the Baldrige Program has resources to support you. The Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence can help senior leaders and advisory boards alike to better understand how well their organization is performing in all key aspects of the governance system. The Baldrige Criteria offer organizations a comprehensive and complex means of improving and reaching excellence. But an organization need not use the resource in full to benefit. And it is certainly not necessary for an organization to aspire to win the prestigious Baldrige Award in order to begin using the framework in modest efforts that could lead to substantial improvements. For example, a governance board can benefit from understanding and adopting the systems perspective and other core concepts built into the Baldrige Criteria. Governance board members can better equip themselves to effectively review an organization’s performance by learning how to evaluate the strength of processes and results based on Criteria-based evaluation factors. A board of directors may benefit from using only the questions in the "Leadership" chapter (category 1); those could be used to outline considerations for performance reviews of the senior leadership (item 1.1) or the governance system (item 1.2). The governance board may also become the catalyst for launching the entire organization’s Baldrige improvement journey. In the case of 2013 Baldrige Award recipient Pewaukee (WI) School District, for example, the board of education initiated the idea of the school system’s full adoption of the Baldrige framework. To help boards of directors get started using the Baldrige Criteria, we previously highlighted a free resource from the Baldrige Program: A Baldrige Perspective for the Board of Directors (downloadable PDF). That document provides governance boards with a sampling of self-assessment questions on an organization’s performance that span all seven categories of the Baldrige Criteria. May the Baldrige framework support good governance in your organization, regardless of your size or sector. "A Baldrige Perspective for the Board of Directors," available on the Baldrige Program’s website (from link in text above)  

Posted by Christine Schaefer Last week, Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday—a member of the Board of Overseers of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award—was named the 2014 Policy Leader of the Year by the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE). As former superintendent of Iredell-Statesville (NC) Schools, Holliday led a transformation in the performance of the 20,000-student district starting in 2002. The district (profile linked as PDF) received the Baldrige Award in 2008. Holliday’s leadership of the Iredell-Statesville Schools using the Baldrige Education for Performance Excellence is featured in the book Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence (see page 68). Holliday served as a Baldrige examiner for eight years prior to his current three-year term on the Board of Overseers. He has been a vocal champion of using the Baldrige framework for organizational improvement and excellence in U.S. education. As he recently stated, "The last six years have seen tremendous policy changes in education, not only in Kentucky but across the nation. Kentucky has implemented policies to enact more rigorous college and career-ready standards, assessments, accountability, professional development, teacher and leader effectiveness, data-driven decision making, and a focus on results." "Those familiar with the Baldrige Criteria will recognize that Kentucky has implemented policies that address the seven components of the Baldrige Criteria," he added. "As a leader, the most practical and impactful training I have ever received was through the Baldrige examiner program. Our success in improving education in Iredell-Statesville and now in Kentucky can certainly be attributed to lessons learned from examiner training and the implementation of the Baldrige Criteria." In recent years, Holliday also has served on the board of directors of the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Assessment Governing Board, and he co-chaired the task force of the Commission on the Accreditation of Educator Preparation that developed preparation standards for new educators. The NASBE award, which Holliday will accept at the association’s national conference in October, is an annual honor that recognizes the contributions of a national or state-level policymaker to education. Previous winners include retired General Colin Powell (former U.S. Secretary of State), James B. Hunt (former governor of North Carolina), Gaston Caperton (former governor of West Virginia), Jennifer Granholm (former governor of Michigan), U.S. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, Richard Riley (former U.S. Secretary of Education and governor of South Carolina), Tom Kean (former governor of New Jersey), former First Lady Barbara Bush, Richard Daley (former mayor of Chicago), and U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia. "Commissioner Holliday’s dedication to improving public education and his achievements are renowned in Kentucky and nationwide," said NASBE Executive Director Kristen Amundson. "His work in cooperation with the Kentucky State Board of Education has made the state a national leader."

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey In the spring, ASQ, in collaboration with the Baldrige Program and the Foundation for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, developed and distributed an electronic market survey to test interest in a Baldrige certification. For most of the 29 survey questions, approximately half of all respondents agreed or strongly agreed that there was a need for and value in a "Certified Baldrige Organizational Excellence Professional." While these responses represented interest in the certification, that positive response rate did not meet the demand/interest threshold that ASQ has seen in other successfully launched certifications, according to Ray Zielke, ASQ’s Baldrige Contract Manager. Based on the demographics of respondents and comments surrounding key questions, it appears that the segment of respondents with the least support of the certification were national examiners. "The creation of an ASQ or ASQ/Partner certification requires a significant investment of time and financial resources. At this time, the potential partners do not think the survey results merit the type of investment necessary to develop and launch a Baldrige Certification," said Zielke. "Rather, it is suggested that BPEP, the Foundation, ASQ, and all members of the Enterprise concentrate on other focused activities to generate awareness, interest, and use of the Baldrige framework." The survey was distributed through ASQ to 2,723 e-mail addresses of individuals who purchased a Baldrige-related product or downloaded Baldrige-related content and through the Baldrige Program’s entire electronic mailing list of about 16,500. ASQ currently offers 18 quality-related professional certifications. ASQ has a systematic and proven process for developing professional certifications that follows the ISO 17024 standard, is overseen by the ASQ Certification Board, and is administered by the ASQ Certification Workgroup. One of the first steps in the process is for the sponsoring group to work with ASQ Marketing to complete an international marketing survey to understand market demand. If the demand is deemed substantial and all other criteria are satisfactorily addressed, the Certification Board is likely to give approval to proceed. If it is determined that there is significant market demand, the sponsoring group commences with a job analysis that defines the major tasks to be performed by the certified individual.

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey In "Award Recipients Respond on How They Lead," we shared insights from 2013 Baldrige Award recipient seniors leaders related to their journeys to excellence. There was so much thoughtful reflection that it couldn’t fit in just one blog. More insights follow: How did you convey to colleagues that your organization was on a continuous improvement journey? "We’re getting great results. We’re changing; we’re growing; we’re improving year over year. That’s energizing. . . . I don’t know what CEOs say to their workforce when they are working very hard and not getting results and not improving. . . . The results speak for themselves. There is something about putting this [Baldrige] framework in place that works." —Sutter Davis Hospital (SDH) CEO Janet Wagner "We received a wonderful award, but that doesn’t stop the journey. . . . The journey is around a continuation of excellence. . . . Each child deserves to get better and to learn and to grow. So is ‘good,’ good enough for those children, or do they deserve better than that? Every time I see a data wall, it reminds me—it’s not good enough. It has to get better, because those kids deserve it." —Pewaukee School District (PWD) Human Resources Director Susan Muenter What was the breakthrough moment for you during your Baldrige journey? In other words, what was the "ah-ha" moment when you knew you were on the right path? When we started to see data as active (e.g., at PWD, the use of dashboards focused the district on measuring processes not just on measuring an event after the fact; departments started to use data on monthly or quarterly bases to look at improvements and to ensure that no child is lagging behind). When accountability systems came into the strategic planning process. When employees started talking about a process or initiative and taking responsibility for it. When a Baldrige feedback report challenged us to define our core competency (e.g., when a multidisciplinary team at SDH set out to define "the Sutter Davis Difference," team members had to define themselves as an organization: we care for each other, we care for patients, and we care for the community). When you realize that your mission really is something that people understand (e.g., at PWD, a lunch lady wanting to make lunchtime a wonderful experience for students, some of whom have said that it’s the best part of their day). What advice would you give other organizations to stay on their continuous improvement journeys? Stay the course, and know that results don’t improve without improving process. Continue to build more and more systems and utilize the Baldrige framework. Keep stepping, because with every step you take, you continue to improve. Build ideas, innovations in a multitude of places. Keep your eye on the "why" of continuous improvement—whether it’s for a child or patient or customer. Then learn "how" through the Baldrige Criteria. Don’t quit. Leaders don’t quit. Without a valid leader, the team doesn’t have anywhere to go. Leadership is discipline, accountability, and staying the course. If you have the opportunity to be a Baldrige Award recipient again, what’s a future trend that you may be asked about? Health Care: Patient safety (still), especially across the continuum of care. Education: More personalized instruction with less resources. Being more efficient with resources (people, money, and time). Having more flexibility in school schedules, with more technology and opportunity in high schools to replace some but not all face-to-face time.

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey In his article "A Road Map for the Future," Jim Smith promotes the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence as a systems framework for managing change, focusing on the customer, and placing emphasis on delivering outstanding business results. Smith, a blogger for Quality Magazine, has 45+-years manufacturing experience, from working on the factory floor as a blue-collar worker to retiring as a senior manager at one of the larger divisions in a Fortune 30 company. I recently reached out to him to better understand his perspective; following is the interview. You write that the Baldrige Criteria can help an organization focus on the customer. Why do you think such a focus is important for manufacturing professionals today?  If you’re not focused on the customer, you’re not going to be around long. One of my quotes that is used in our quality training is that "customer satisfaction is the barometer by which true quality is measured." Quality is no longer an element of customer satisfaction, it is fundamental to an organization’s survival. When it comes to quality, the customer’s vote is the only one that really matters. I’ve written pieces published in Quality Magazine’s "Face of Quality" with those themes. One of the Baldrige Program’s biggest challenges, in my opinion, is helping manufacturers see the value that the Criteria’s organization-wide perspective brings in improving the entire organization’s system end-to-end. From your experience with the Baldrige Criteria, what do you think they offer to organizations that other quality improvement methods like Lean and Six Sigma do not? Or, in other words, what would make a manufacturing professional take a second look at the Criteria?  The Baldrige Criteria not only focus on quality and leadership but on business results. In addition, they can be used as a model for positive change. Quality professionals need to be the translators (communicators) to senior managers about the value of the Baldrige because there is an alphabet soup out there of various initiatives. There is no silver bullet, but the Baldrige is about as good of a model for change, etc., as there is out there. The others focus at a different level and, for the most part, don’t involve the corner office. You write that organizations that gain the most benefit from continuous improvement use the Criteria as a model for change. Why is having such a model so important today? On the subject of continuous improvement, the Baldrige stresses strategic management, knowing what’s important to your organization and the progress you’re making to get there. From that perspective, it is a model that stresses continuous improvement as a way of life. This provides for an organizational culture, which in turn provides the spark for the pursuit of excellence. As Dr. W. Edwards Deming indicated in his 14th point, such a model provides the energy to "get everyone working on the transition." Part of the law that established the Baldrige Program and Criteria was for role-model organizations to share best practices for benchmarking. What’s the importance of such benchmarking today? Benchmarking has been around for a while (I was corporate benchmarking and continuous improvement manager at my company back in 1996, so I know just enough to be dangerous), but it can be an expensive venture. However, the requirement that Baldrige winners share their best practices allows most everyone to learn (inexpensively) from the best. The danger of benchmarking (as Juran and Deming indicated) is for companies that do not fully understand their own processes. For instance, when Motorola received the Baldrige Award in 1988, the best practice was Six Sigma. Many companies have fallen short of implementing a similar program because of lack of understanding of what it really takes to implement such a program. I was involved at my company when we implemented a MAJOR initiative, but it still took us awhile to get ready before we embarked on such an aggressive effort. When organizations question why they might consider doing a Baldrige self-assessment or applying for Baldrige Award feedback, we often ask the leaders how they know how they are doing without such an assessment. Such conversations have led to discussions of organizations measuring the right things at the right time and gathering data to use for action. What do you see as the importance of measurement systems? The problem most organizations have is overestimating their performance in a lot of things. This is true whether it is technical or behavioral. The problem rests in two camps. Senior management may have their heads in the sand in the first place. Many of those managers came up through the organization and likely had a good feel for the environment, but they have been isolated, with their paradigms somewhat frozen in time. Most companies have developed stop-light metrics to give themselves a better understanding, but for most, it has not been a success. Way too many (often confusing) metrics may hide the most important elements of a business. In the second camp are the quality professionals. They know what’s going on but either don’t know how to effectively tell their managers or are too afraid to do so. One of the most valuable functions a quality professional has is to "tell the emperor he is naked." A company can’t get better (or know what is important to work on) without an accurate picture of what’s happening. Therefore, it is essential to have a clear understanding of internal and external business practices, etc., via application of assessments done accurately and without bias. Jim L. Smith is an ASQ Fellow, former examiner for the Illinois Performance Excellence Program (a member of the Alliance for Performance Excellence, a network of Baldrige-based programs), and president of Jim Smith Quality. What are your insights into why an organization should consider the Baldrige Criteria as a quality systems model?

Posted by Christine Schaefer A new case study offered by ASQ this summer describes ongoing improvements in a public school district that has seen growing poverty and decreased funding in recent years. The Iredell-Statesville Schools (I-SS), located in southwestern North Carolina, earned the Baldrige Award for systemwide excellence in 2008. With 21,231 students today, I-SS has maintained its strong focus on student achievement despite significant budget cuts that have eliminated more than 300 positions in recent years. For example, the case study notes that through educators’ analysis of data on student learning and improvements in instruction, an I-SS elementary school serving a very high-poverty population (90 percent of students receive subsidized school meals) boosted reading proficiency among first graders from a rate of 62 percent in 2011-2012 to a rate of 82 percent in 2013-2014. What’s more, the principal of the school reported that students in five of the site’s six grade levels were performing at or above the previous year’s proficiency levels by the midpoint of the 2013-2014 school year. I-SS has surmounted financial and other crushing challenges before. Its turnaround story in the years preceding its 2008 Baldrige Award (shared in Baldrige 20/20, pp. 68-72) showed the promise of the Baldrige Education Criteria for Performance Excellence to improve the performance of public school systems in good times or bad. Dr. Melanie Taylor, I-SS’s deputy superintendent of curriculum and instruction, authored the July 2014 ASQ case study. At the Baldrige Program’s Quest for Excellence® Conference in April 2014, Taylor presented on using the Baldrige management framework to improve the efficiency of district operations and the effectiveness of school instructional programs (see graphic below). For Taylor’s tips for other educational leaders who are new to the Baldrige approach to systemwide improvement, read the pre-conference interview. Courtesy of Iredell-Statesville Schools   Courtesy of Iredell-Statesville Schools      

Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon I have always been fascinated by new words. A few years ago Larry Potterfield, the Founder and CEO of Baldrige Award recipient MidwayUSA shared one of his "words": voluntold. Voluntold is helping people understand the wisdom of doing something that Larry thinks is good for the company (and them). Very recently I read a blog post by Gerry Sandusky (not the former Penn State coach) in which he used the term probortunity. Probortunity is the unity between problems and opportunity, i.e. looking at ways to turn problems into opportunities. So with the folks at Merriam-Webster probably looking askance at me, let me propose stratovation, the important unification of strategy and innovation. You might first say, "Aren’t they the same?" The answer to that question is clearly "no." But should there be greater unity between them? I believe the answer is clearly "yes." Let’s look at the differences between these concepts and why the need for greater commingling of the two. Not all strategy is innovative and not all innovations are strategic. According to the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, strategy is about your organization’s approach to the future. Strategy might be built around new partnerships, revenue growth, divestitures, and new products or core competencies. Innovation involves adopting an idea, process, technology, product, or business model that is either new or new to its proposed application. Good strategy should be about clarity in direction; it is marching orders for the organization. Good innovation is about possibility; efforts are full of uncertainty and a significant number are likely to fail. Detecting failures early is the key so that resources can be re-prioritized. As pointed out in a DigitalTonto blog, strategy is a logic chain that results in one set of choices rather than another. Innovation is about experimentation, multiple choices, and trying things out. Without strategy you lack direction. Without innovation you risk losing relevance as an organization. So where does stratovation fit in? As product and technology cycles are becoming increasingly shorter, it is important to have ongoing innovation efforts to feed organizational strategy. Both successes and failures in innovation efforts can feed strategy and help in setting clear direction. Organizations need a focused stratovation process, a mechanism for encouraging innovation and making sure outcomes of innovation efforts are hardwired to the strategic planning and thinking of the organization. Senior leaders need to set the climate for innovation and make sure there is the hardwired linkage to strategy setting. All workforce members are possible contributors to innovation. Senior leaders need to prioritize resources so that high potential innovations have the resources needed for exploration. It takes a proactive focus on stratovation for ongoing organizational success. So, how is your organization set for stratovation?