Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey A recent ASQ blog "Clear Vision and Focus for Success" by Anshuman Tiwari got me thinking about the meaning of "vision"—from the Baldrige perspective. The Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence define "vision" as "your organization’s desired future state. The vision describes where your organization is headed, what it intends to be, or how it wishes to be perceived in the future." It seems to me that really defining their vision is one of the first steps for organizations that want to get started with the Baldrige Criteria. In fact, among the free resources for organizations new to Baldrige, Are We Making Progress begins by delving into "vision": Are your values, vision, mission, and plans being deployed? How do you know? Are they understood and supported by your leadership team? How do you know? Are they understood and supported by all members of your workforce? How do you know? Are the messages being well received? How do you know? When doing a Baldrige self-assessment, in the very second set of questions, you will be asked to define your vision. And, if you apply for a Baldrige Award, your answers to these questions will become part of what the Baldrige examiners will evaluate your application against. They will assess whether your actions and processes are in alignment with your vision and whether your results achieved are moving you closer to or father away from your vision. There’s no question to me that the importance of a clear and focused vision will be evident to Baldrige Award applicants when they read their feedback reports. Sister Mary Jean Ryan, board chair and former CEO of SSM Health Care, the first Baldrige Award recipient in health care, has said that the Baldrige Criteria brought focus to the hospital system’s continuous improvement activities. In its Baldrige feedback reports, SSM was challenged to define its mission and vision statements to be actionable and measurable. "The Baldrige framework asked SSM to define ‘exceptional’ in terms of patient, employee, and physician satisfaction, as well as clinical outcomes and financial performance. We set goals around each of these measures, based on the highest-performing organizations inside and outside of health care," she said during her acceptance speech for the 2014 Harry S. Hertz Leadership Award. 2009 Baldrige Award recipient MidwayUSA lists its vision, along with its mission, purpose, and non-negotiable values, right on its website. CEO Larry Potterfield has said that the small business’s vision statement can be recited by just about every employee. "All of the things that we do here are based on that simple, little vision," Potterfield said. "I can’t imagine a more powerful vision. If there’s a stronger vision statement in America, then I’d love to see it." David P. Tilton, president and CEO of 2009 Baldrige Award recipient AtlantiCare, said that the health care system is always thinking about its future and that fuels its vision. "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." Jo Ann Brumit, CEO of 2000 Baldrige Award recipient KARLEE, which just celebrated its 40th anniversary, has said, as a leader,  "You have to trust and have faith in your vision. Be very open, honest, and very appreciative of people. The team needs to feel your passion, energy, and commitment. They will follow your lead." Have you thought about your organization’s vision lately?

Posted by Christine Schaefer Last year, the National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA) published a new benchmarking tool, Rubrics of Practice and Suggested Measures, to help its members measure the effectiveness of their school system communications. The Rockville, Maryland-based professional association—whose members include school communications professionals throughout the United States and Canada—tapped longtime Baldrige examiner Sandra ("Sandy") Cokeley, APR, to help guide the groundbreaking benchmarking project. In a recent interview, Cokeley shared how the project benefited from the Baldrige Education Criteria for Performance Excellence. Cokeley was director of quality and community relations of the Pearl River School District when it became one of the first recipients from the education sector to receive a Baldrige Award in 2001. She also has been involved with NSPRA on many levels since 1989, serving as president of the local and state chapters in New York and as president of the national association in 2008-2009. An active alumni member of the Baldrige Program’s 2014 Board of Examiners, Cokeley today continues using the Baldrige framework to help various organizations in the areas of public relations and organizational improvement. She said her background with the Baldrige Program and related knowledge of continuous improvement led to her role with the NSPRA benchmarking project. Following are her responses to questions about the project. 1. The Baldrige Education Criteria are credited as a reference in the NSPRA publication. Tell us more about the connection. The strong alignment between this project and [the Baldrige Criteria] is evidenced through the parallels between the PDSA (Plan-Do-Study-Act) model for continuous improvement and our RACE (Research-Analyze-Communicate-Evaluate) model for communications. (PDSA is used by many organizations pursuing continuous improvement through the Baldrige Criteria; the RACE model is a standard practice in public relations planning.) The rubrics are organized across three levels ("emerging," "established," and "exemplary"), which align with the maturity of the two models. NSPRA Rubric Descriptors 2. How has your Baldrige background helped inform the benchmarking project? For decades, school communications professionals have shared best practices with one another, but not necessarily in a formal, measured way. Folding the Baldrige framework into the benchmarking project helped strengthen how we compare and evaluate our performance because of the strong connection between the RACE model and PDSA. With RACE, you research the existing knowledge, attitudes, and opinions of the people you’re communicating with around what you’re trying to communicate; you then analyze that research and develop a plan; next, you do the actual communicating; finally and most important, you evaluate and see if you realized that change in knowledge level, attitude, or behavior that you were seeking. Being able to articulate the RACE model along with key principles of the continuous improvement model, such as alignment, integration, and measured results, helped us tremendously. Emphasizing the results component of benchmarking was also significant. 3. Tell us more about the development of the benchmarks. One of our [NSPRA] members approached us in 2011 regarding the development of benchmarks in our profession. Education has been focusing on increased accountability with recent linkages of student performance to teacher performance and associated administrator accountability. Per NSPRA past practice, we developed a task force to explore how we could develop benchmarks our members could use to evaluate and grow their communications program. Because our work encompasses a broad cross section of focus areas and approaches, we first decided to narrow our focus in three primary areas. We identified three "Critical Function Areas" for our initial focus (with plans to expand later): (1) Comprehensive Professional Communications Program, (2) Internal Communications (Faculty and Staff), and (3) Parent/Family Communications. Next, using both our own research as well as other research available in the field, we identified program components under each of these three areas. For example, for the Function Area of Internal Communications, program components include the following: Researching and Understanding Employee Needs, Expectations, Opinions, Attitudes, Knowledge Levels Employee Engagement Employee Alignment with the School District’s Vision, Mission, and Goals Leadership and Management Communications Managing Information Overload Customer Service Employee Ambassadors Communicating with Employees During a Crisis In the true spirit of benchmarking, we next went out to our members and asked them how they were measuring their effectiveness in each of these components and to share their results with us. We then shared this compilation of work and sought feedback from our members at a seminar in July 2012. What evolved was the idea of developing rubrics of practice under each of these function areas against which our members could evaluate their program. They also asked for standardized measures, either through set survey questions or a set survey instrument. We went to work on the rubrics first. Over the next year, we developed the Rubrics of Practice in the three Critical Function Areas and published them as a resource last year. 4. How have school communications professionals received and used the new rubrics? We are receiving great feedback on the tool. Members are using it in all of the ways we wanted, from independent evaluation of their program to inform improvement to a more comprehensive evaluation with involvement of their board of education. Still, this is very much a work in progress. We acknowledged from the beginning that it was a huge undertaking and would most likely continuously evolve given how our work is always changing. 5. What are the next steps in this work? This past year, we added a fourth area of "Branding and Marketing Your Schools." The revised version is in production now and should be available soon. Looking ahead, we have identified other areas for future rubric development and are also exploring the standardized survey/measure request. Editor’s Note: The 2013-2014 Baldrige Education Criteria for Performance Excellence are available for download. The 2015-2016 revised version will be available in early 2015.

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey For veterinarian Dr. Rona Shapiro, running a small business can be challenging. "Many times, I’m the person pushing the broom, and being the veterinarian, and answering the phone. We all work very hard. . . . Running my own business—sometimes it tends to run you and you don’t run it." Then Shapiro began using the self-assessment tools that are a good starting point for the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. "When I started working with the Baldrige Criteria, I felt a light bulb switch on. [The Criteria framework] really gives me guidance as a business owner. . . . What Baldrige has done is it’s given me tools to feel like I know how to be a better leader. It has helped me understand what I need to do to lead my organization. . . . For the first time since owning a business, I feel confident in making decisions." Shapiro’s business started in 1986, but after a year of practice, the founders realized that their original business model needed to be modified to sustain the quality of life of the veterinarian, including finding time to sleep. Another animal hospital and a 24-hour Animal Emergency Center were added to the Ohio practice, along with additional staff members. The three animal hospitals, staffed by 48 employees, now care for about 18,000 pets per year, and each hospital has a competitor animal hospital within a mile. According to Dr. Shapiro, when she first read about the Baldrige Criteria online, she felt overwhelmed. "Many companies have entire work groups, and all they do is human resources, or all they focus on is leadership," she said. "As a small business owner, I am the workforce. I am the cage cleaner. I am the CEO. I wear many hats. It always seemed a little overwhelming to try and consider incorporating the Criteria in my company because I’m busy." For Shapiro, the Baldrige Criteria-based Are We Making Progress? survey proved the easiest way to begin and quickly identify areas to improve. She gave the survey to her staff members to learn how they thought the organization was doing. "Using the results from that questionnaire gave us guidance on what we needed to do to make things better," said Dr. Shapiro. "It was very clear once we got results that the animal hospitals [within the practice] had different problem areas to focus on." The next step for the small business owner was to write an Organizational Profile. Shapiro said she needed to figure out "how did we get here? What’s important to us? What are we accomplishing, and what sets us apart from others? . . . When I started writing the Organizational Profile, it started to make things much easier. . . . Writing the Organizational Profile helped me identify who I am. I never really verbalized it. When I know what we want, it makes it really easy to figure out solutions to problems." Shapiro said the veterinarian practice always had a mission statement, but after writing the Organizational Profile, she changed the mission based on having a better understanding of what the organization wanted to achieve. She shared the mission with workforce members, ensuring that everyone was in agreement. "Now that we have alignment in the workforce, it makes it really easy to use our mission, vision, and values in everything we do. Identifying how they relate to every aspect of our work, how we interact with each other, how we care for each other, even when we are doing evaluations, every statement ties back to our mission, vision, and values. [The Baldrige Criteria have] just made it really easy to do that." Using Criteria principles to build alignment and consistency in the small business has also led to clarity for Shapiro as a leader. Because every decision is aligned with the organization’s mission, vision, and values, she said she finds it easier to manage the workforce. "Every decision I make, I go back to the Organizational Profile," said Shapiro. "It gives me clarity. . . . It helps me identify how we can become excellent, what are our stumbling blocks to that." She gave the example of the Criteria making difficult employee conversations easier; employees can now be reminded of when their interactions may not be in alignment with the agreed-to mission, vision, and values. Through writing an Organizational Profile, the small business identified one of its core competencies as making the patient experience as positive as possible, especially for fearful animals. Shapiro and her staff started building on that core competency by explaining to pet owners what staff were doing and why, and teaching the owners what they can do at home to reduce their pets’ stress and anxiety, thus reducing illness. Shapiro said such sharing has been very well received and enriched relationships with customers. Baldrige also inspired benchmarking initiatives with other veterinarian hospitals outside of the service area, Shapiro said. Her practice is now in communication with similar practices to discuss ideas, software, challenges, and other issues-finding ways to help each other. Shapiro has even introduced the Baldrige Criteria to the board of her veterinary fraternity alumni group, helping the board write a mission and vision. "This hopefully will help align our disenfranchised alumni with the very important work we do to help young, future veterinarians. Baldrige is truly inspirational," she said. In addition, Shapiro recently attended a conference sponsored by the Partnership for Excellence, her local Baldrige-based program that is part of the Alliance for Performance Excellence. "The biggest thing that I took away from [the conference] is that the Baldrige community is very generous. They embraced me. Everybody really wants to help you achieve excellence," she said. From the conference, Shapiro said she learned how to coach for a culture of excellence and about the things that limit organizations from becoming excellent. "Everything we’ve done [with the Baldrige Criteria] has made our organization a happier place to work. We’ve identified what’s really important to us," added Shapiro. "Even though there is a lot to do, I’m totally not frustrated with the process because the little bit I have done has given me so much clarity. . . . [Baldrige] has already helped us so much. . . .  I’m inspired by it." Editor’s Note: The subject of this story is a relative of a Baldrige staff member. The Baldrige Program welcomes similar story ideas about people who have seen results from using the Criteria; however, the program cannot promise that it can use every idea.  Feel free to comment here.

Posted by Christine Schaefer The following have been compiled from interviews of presenters at the Baldrige Program’s 26th Annual Quest for Excellence® conference. How to Get Started Using the Baldrige Framework: Communicate: Make sure you have the support of senior leadership and employees. Instigating organizational change is not a one-person challenge, and the only way to truly sustain change and excellence is if everyone is on the same page. Share/steal: The Baldrige community is so generous and open; take advantage of conferences and best-practice sessions. If you’re struggling in a certain area, it’s likely that other organizations have been down the same path and come out on the other side. There’s no sense in reinventing the wheel when so many great leaders and organizations are eager to share their stories with you. Keep going: It’s a journey, and one that will take you longer than you might expect. The Baldrige framework is not about an award or a temporary fix. It’s about lasting, continuous improvement and a systematic framework for excellence. You will never "master" the Criteria. Instead, you can use it every year, every month, every day, to ensure that your organization is striving for excellence in every aspect. These tips are from Kelsey May, general counsel of MESA (2006 and 2012 Baldrige Award recipient, small business). Read the complete interview at http://nistbaldrige.blogs.govdelivery.com/2014/03/19/growing-by-leaps-and-baldrige/. How to Build a Customer-Focused Strategy: Don’t treat continuous improvement, Lean, or another improvement strategy as an add-on to your current operations or a "bolt-on accessory." Integrate improvement with your culture and how you do business. Build ownership for your strategy among the workforce. This means that you have to get people’s buy-in, but understand that some things are non-negotiable, such as safety, health, morals, and ethics. Work on a "demand-pull" approach of people wanting your products, rather than a "supply-push" approach. Don’t focus on efficient measures (these are noble, but you can wind up with lousy measures); instead, try for effective measures that are focused, do what they are supposed to do and are not overburdened with too many different purposes. These tips are from Ken Dean, vice president/director of quality systems with the Customer Development Group of Nestlé Purina PetCare Company (2010 Baldrige Award recipient, manufacturing). Read the complete interview at http://nistbaldrige.blogs.govdelivery.com/2014/03/26/what-could-you-discover-about-your-customer-strategy/. How to Manage Organizational Change: Shrink the change to effect change. Build on your "bright spots" (people, processes) to effect change. Understand that information is not necessarily the key to change; the key is not only to inform but also to demonstrate the change and ensure understanding through accountability checks. Innovate to sustain the change. To achieve different results, you have to do things a different way. Thinking of new ways to conduct value-added processes is key to growth. These tips are from Jan Englert, RN, principal of quality and safety at Premier (2006 Baldrige Award recipient, service business). Read the complete interview at http://nistbaldrige.blogs.govdelivery.com/2014/03/18/expect-change-be-innovative-and-steer-the-elephant/. How to Align an Organization and Manage Performance for Improvement/Change: Consider these three key accelerants to the organizational alignment needed for an improvement journey: (1) Highest-ranking officers who are personally committed to steering the journey, (2) senior executives who hold leaders accountable for metric-based performance outcomes through a performance management and evaluation system, and (3) senior teams who provide their leaders with the skills needed to maximize their own potential by providing mandatory, quarterly leadership training. Address chronically low-performing members of the team to prevent negative impacts on the culture of the organization, and reward successes of high-performing individuals so that you don’t miss out on the opportunity to maximize the potential of the lifeblood of the organization: the solid performers who need mentoring and coaching. A key work process for high-performing organizations includes a consistently practiced, fair, documented, and objective series of discussions with high, solid, and low performers to sustain the momentum for the arduous journey of cultural transformation. These tips are from Craig Deao, member of the senior executive team of Studer Group (2010 Baldrige Award recipient, small business). Read the complete interview at http://nistbaldrige.blogs.govdelivery.com/2014/03/27/changing-culture-insights-from-a-2010-baldrige-award-winner/.   Editor’s Note: The next two blogs in this series will feature tips from Baldrige Award recipients in the health care and education sectors, respectively, based on interviews of presenters at the Quest for Excellence conference this year.

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey As evidence of ways that frameworks can be used for planning and continuous improvement, a recently posted paper "Using the Baldrige Criteria for Observatory Strategic and Operations Planning" demonstrates how the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence were used to guide such planning—and quickly. One of the paper’s authors, Nicole M. Radziwill, a member of ASQ’s Influential Voices, said that while at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), she and her colleagues were tasked by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to prepare a workforce management plan.  Such a task, she said, "was definitely going to require us to dig deep and reflect on how we were managing our workforce, both at the operational level and in service of our strategic priorities. Unfortunately, none of us had ever done this before, so we were pretty much clueless as to what elements such a report would require, and what sorts of questions we might have to answer to ensure that we were approaching the question of workforce management strategically. The NSF wasn’t really able to provide guidance to us other than ‘you should use best practices from business and industry.’ Fortunately, because I had been involved in the quality community for several years, I knew that the Baldrige Criteria might help us accomplish our goal. And it did!" Radziwill and her colleagues used Criteria questions from category 5, Workforce Focus, as well as questions from the Organizational Profile, to guide their planning. "This helped us construct the initial draft in an intense week, rather than the weeks or months it might have taken if we didn’t have the Criteria to guide us," she said. "The main point is that you don’t need to use or implement all sections of the Baldrige Criteria for it to yield immediate tangible value for your organization," added Radziwill, "consider applying the sections when you need them in your continuous improvement journey." The paper’s conclusion was that "The Baldrige Criteria helped provide the National Radio Astronomy Observatory with a template to rapidly launch the development of a Workforce Management Plan. . . .  The major benefit provided by the Baldrige Criteria was that NRAO was able to quickly understand the requirements for a Workforce Management Plan. From this knowledge, senior leaders were able to formulate the right questions to ask staff and other senior leaders, and from these results pull together existing and new material into a cohesive approach and document that satisfied the needs of the funding agency." Similarly, questions in other categories of the Baldrige Criteria—leadership; strategic planning; customer focus; measurement, analysis, and knowledge management; operations focus; and results—might provide tools to promote productivity in other areas of an organization’s overall operations and planning. Where would you start? Side note: Congratulations to ASQ on winning the Wisconsin Forward Award this year. As a policy, we try not to call out organizations who are on the Baldrige journey and/or use the Baldrige Criteria unless they win the Baldrige Award, but as a Baldrige Program partner, ASQ is not eligible for the Baldrige Award.

Posted by Christine Schaefer The following have been compiled from interviews of presenters at the Baldrige Program’s 26th Annual Quest for Excellence® conference. How to Foster Physician Leadership: Appoint a physician champion who is a trusted peer to recruit physicians within the organization to invest in leadership training. Emphasize a 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. These tips are from Dr. Brian Condit, director of the Physician Leadership Institute at North Mississippi Health Services (2012 Baldrige Award recipient, health care). Read the complete interview at http://nistbaldrige.blogs.govdelivery.com/2014/03/04/a-physician-hothouse-for-innovation/. How to Improve Processes Using the Baldrige Criteria and Magnet: Focus on the concept that both the Baldrige Criteria and Magnet are based on evidence-based practice; they learn from each other. Emphasize that both the Baldrige Criteria and Magnet are grounded in what is best for the patient, which creates purpose and pride in the workforce. When developing committee structure, capitalize on your existing committees. Keep in mind that 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. Use one process improvement methodology when making improvements identified by the Baldrige Criteria and by Magnet; then involve nursing and non-nursing staff members 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. These tips are from Donna Poduska, chief nursing officer, and Priscilla Nuwash, system director for performance excellence, at University of Colorado Health (which now encompasses Poudre Valley Health System, 2008 Baldrige Award recipient, health care). Read the complete interview at http://nistbaldrige.blogs.govdelivery.com/2014/02/20/whats-more-dispensable-magnet-or-baldrige/. How to Partner with a Competitor to Achieve Clinical Integration: Build a foundation of trust and open communication. Start with a common goal and shared vision and work from there. Bring in a nonbiased third party to help with facilitation and building the infrastructure. These tips are from Tammy Dye, vice president of clinical services and chief quality officer, and Suki Wright, director of organizational excellence and innovation, at Schneck Medical Center, 2011 Baldrige Award recipient, health care). Read the complete interview at http://nistbaldrige.blogs.govdelivery.com/2014/04/01/for-the-good-of-the-community/. How to Use Lean Methodology to Address the Baldrige Criteria: Use Kanban (Lean scheduling system) or 2-bin system (Lean inventory control system) as a systematic approach to controlling the costs of supplies in response to Criteria item 6.2, which asks how organizations control the costs of operations). Use visual management to ensure that the day-to-day operation of work processes meet requirements and lead to the in-process measures used to control and improve those processes (Criteria item, 6.1b). Standard work, a foundational concept of Lean, is a simple, written description of the safest, highest-quality, most-efficient way known to perform a task or achieve an outcome. Use standard work in both clinical and nonclinical areas for deploying key processes, in order to reduce variability from caregiver to caregiver. These tips are from Pattie Skriba, vice president of business excellenceat Advocate Good Samaritan (2010 Baldrige Award recipient, health care). Read the complete interview at http://nistbaldrige.blogs.govdelivery.com/2014/04/03/Got-MUDA-無駄/. How to Benefit from the Voice of the Customer: Foster a shared relationship between the customer and organization. Provide customers with feedback opportunities before and after their health care visits and even after hours. Create more than one way to listen to customers, for example, utilizing technology to improve how to listen. These tips are from Crystal Lewis, improvement specialist at Southcentral Foundation (2011 Baldrige Award recipient, health care). Read the complete interview at http://nistbaldrige.blogs.govdelivery.com/2014/03/20/listening-and-customer-satisfaction/. Editor’s Note: The first blog in this series features tips from Baldrige Award-winning businesses, and the next will feature tips from Baldrige Award-winning organizations in the education sector; all are based on interviews of presenters at this year’s Quest for Excellence conference.

Posted by Christine Schaefer The following have been compiled from interviews of presenters at the Baldrige Program’s 26th Annual Quest for Excellence® conference. How to Use the Baldrige Criteria to Improve a School System: Talk with the staff involved: Help the staff to identify their priority areas for improvement, looking at the data you have to support that, and get them involved in identifying what the "big rocks" are. Sometimes it’s an easy win to get them involved in being part of the solution as well as identifying the problem. It’s not always what the leadership might see as a priority area; if workers see it as a major issue, then they tend to be more engaged in the improvement process and have more buy-in along the way. Use the Baldrige Criteria and the Baldrige processes without using all the Baldrige terminology. Using language that is familiar to the workers is less overwhelming. "Go slow to go fast": Keep a pulse on your staff to see where they are in the transition process through both formal check-in meetings and informal conversations. You need to have a combination of that hard and soft data to monitor. You need some folks to tell you what the reality is on how things are going. These tips are from Melanie Taylor, associate superintendent of curriculum and instruction of Iredell-Statesville Public Schools (2008 Baldrige Award recipient, education). Read the complete interview at http://nistbaldrige.blogs.govdelivery.com/2014/04/02/tight-education-funding-growing-student-needs-where-baldrige-is-essential/. How to Conduct an Organizational Self-Assessment: Use the "Are We Making Progress?" surveys as a starting point for using the Baldrige framework. These surveys—one for the senior leadership team and another for other employees (available for free download from the Baldrige Web site at http://www.nist.gov/baldrige/publications/progress.cfm—are based on the Organizational Profile questions in the Baldrige Criteria. Once the survey results are in, pull together a cross-functional team to analyze the results and discuss potential answers to the questions from the Organizational Profile. Conduct a gap analysis based on this work; it will likely provide several "jumping off points" for continuous improvement efforts in the organization. These tips are from Lisa Muller, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning at Jenks Public Schools (2005 Baldrige Award recipient, education). Read the complete interview at http://nistbaldrige.blogs.govdelivery.com/2014/03/25/value-of-the-organizational-profile-to-an-ever-changing-organization/. How to Implement a New Curriculum: Use a collaborative planning process to ensure that you are implementing the curriculum across your system systematically. Following are questions addressed by the school system at each step of the process: 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? These tips are from Rose Ann Schwartz, staff development teacher, and LaVerne Kimball, associate superintendent, at Montgomery County Public Schools (2010 Baldrige Award recipient, education). Read the complete interview at http://nistbaldrige.blogs.govdelivery.com/2014/03/13/preparing-students-for-future-jobs-update-from-2010-baldrige-award-winner/. How to Create a Strategic Plan for a School District: 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. This tips are from Brian Kammers, vice president of the board of education, and Marty Van Hulle, principal of Pewaukee High School, for the Pewaukee School District (2013 Baldrige Award recipient, education). Read the complete story at http://nistbaldrige.blogs.govdelivery.com/2014/04/22/from-blind-squirrels-looking-for-nuts-to-strategic-planners/. How to Systematically Measure Your Organization’s Performance: Design a system for your performance measurement and improvement that is repeatable and sustainable (Approach). Involve all key groups in development of your performance measurement and improvement system and share the results widely (Deploy). Make calm, clear-headed decisions based on the data analysis and regularly evaluate the effectiveness of the performance measurement process itself (Learn). Align your performance measurement system with your organization’s mission, vision, values, and key work processes (Integrate). These tips are from Fonda Vera, executive dean for planning, research, effectiveness, and development, and Bao Huynh, director of institutional effectiveness, at Richland Community College (2005 Baldrige Award recipient, education). Read the complete interview at http://nistbaldrige.blogs.govdelivery.com/2014/03/06/measuring-performance-best-practices-of-a-2005-baldrige-award-winner/. Editor’s Note: The first two blogs in this series feature tips from Baldrige Award-winning businesses and health care organizations, respectively, based on interviews of presenters at this year’s Quest for Excellence conference.

Posted by Christine Schaefer A few years ago, we published an introductory book about the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, Baldrige 20/20. Our aim was to build understanding of the framework and its benefits among senior leaders of businesses and other kinds of organizations. To that end, we shared aggregated results data, turnaround stories, and other information and guidance from recipients of the Baldrige Award. The tips shared by executives in the success stories of Baldrige 20/20 are timeless and applicable to organizations of nearly any size and sector. So I am posting three sets of those do’s and don’ts here—from a health care organization, a small business, and a manufacturing company—for your convenient reading and sharing. Tips from Rulon Stacey, (former) CEO of Poudre Valley Health System (PDF profile), 2008 Baldrige Award winner (health care): Don’t let Baldrige become an activity your organization does on the side. As Stacey remembers it, "Initially, Baldrige was something people did once a year, looking at each category in a silo, separate from their ‘real jobs.’" This approach did not work. Don’t overemphasize the award. At one point in Poudre Valley Health System’s journey, says Stacey, "There was a perception among employees and physicians that this was just one more award we wanted to add to our résumé . . . [so] motivation dropped when we found out that we were not a winner." However, Stacey adds, "It was so much more motivational to engage our workforce in providing world-class care instead of asking for their help to win another award." Don’t give up. "There were lots of times in our journey when we questioned whether it was worth it," says Stacey. "We got disappointed, even angry, and staff seemed to lose motivation. But we persisted and focused on improvements we had already made and improvements we wanted to make." Don’t "cram for the test." Don’t do Baldrige by simply memorizing the "right" answers before the Baldrige examiners visit your site as part of their evaluation, advises Stacey, "Live it!" Do get buy-in from the top. As Poudre Valley Health System found, direction and empowerment from leadership is essential. Do consider Baldrige-related activities productive time. "A common question we get is, how much productive time do you lose to Baldrige?" says Stacey. "If you’re asking that question, you don’t get it yet. Baldrige has to be how you run your business." Do make improvement your main focus. Says Stacey, "We realized that a lot of our focus had shifted to ‘winning the award.’" When the main focus shifted back to improving, Poudre Valley Health System began seeing the beneficial results that led it to the Baldrige Award. Tips from Terry May; CEO, president, and founder of MESA Products, Inc.; 2012 and 2006 Baldrige Award winner (small business): Don’t set expectations for a quick journey to performance excellence. MESA’s early expectations were unrealistic, says May—a certain recipe for frustration, discouragement, and failure. Don’t focus just on winning an award. "Every year we didn’t win, we’d still gotten better as a company," says May. He recommends focusing on the positives, addressing the opportunities for improvement in feedback reports, and never losing sight that the organization is improving throughout the journey. Do things your way; there is no magic formula. "Our method was trial and error—and it took us five years," says May. "As a small company, our resources are limited. But although we may not do things the way others do, we find ways to get things done." Do be patient, and do your best. One trick is not to call this process "Baldrige," says May. "We needed this to become part of our daily job, so we called what we were doing ‘The MESA Way.’" Tips from Ron Fiala, process improvement manager, Cargill Corn Milling (PDF profile), 2008 Baldrige Award winner (manufacturing): Don’t expect only highs along the journey. Executives must be willing to make incremental improvements every day. Don’t reject external feedback without giving it due consideration. The hardest part about feedback is having the courage to accept it. Do make the decision to truly become a process-honoring culture. In 2002, Cargill Corn Milling made this decision, which became a defining moment. Do accept that an outside set of eyes can point out your blind spots. Do recognize the elements critical to success: leadership involvement and support, determination, resources (both internal and external), and willingness to accept feedback. Are you trying to convince senior leaders or your workforce that adopting the Baldrige systems framework will boost the performance of your organization? Consider reading and sharing other information in Baldrige 20/20 or elsewhere on our website to help you make the case. Or, if your organization has already been using the Baldrige framework and demonstrating excellent performance, get ready to apply for the next Baldrige Award using the 2015 application forms and guidance now posted on our website. Coming soon: "16 More Do’s and Don’ts from Baldrige Award Winners" Coming this week: Check the Baldrige website for news on the 2014 Baldrige Award recipients.  

Note: As the third in a three-part series, this blog continues the examples of how small businesses are benefiting from using the Baldrige Criteria. See part I and part II. Prioritization of Improvements The small number of paid staff members at the Jefferson Parish Animal Shelter in Louisiana have used the Baldrige Criteria to literally save lives. Shelter director Robin Beaulieu, who was introduced to the Baldrige Criteria by a local MBA class, worked with students to improve the process of selecting homeless dogs for euthanasia, a project the shelter prioritized by using the Criteria to focus on its purpose, mission, vision, and values. According to Beaulieu, "the Baldrige Criteria have provided a foundation to build a sense of purpose and method of questioning ourselves and reflecting on how to improve our performance and save lives," she said. "As a municipal shelter, we are challenged and are a reflection of the community. We are never satisfied with our performance, but we are systematically improving, and the numbers have shown how much we have improved." From 2010 to 2013, the shelter’s two key measures—euthanasia and adoption rates—have significantly improved: euthanasia reduced by 67% and adoptions increased by 75%. "I urge other small businesses to learn the value of using the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence," said Milrany. "Freese and Nichols uses the framework to better understand where to focus our continued efforts to improve our services for the benefit of clients." Milrany said that many of Freese and Nichols’ clients are municipalities interested in Baldrige. She tells them, "It isn’t the award . . . the journey is what’s important." She advises organizations to identify the areas of their operations that need improvement using Baldrige self-assessments such as Are We Making Progress? and easyInsight: Take a First Step toward a Baldrige Self-Assessment. She suggests "work on those a little at a time so that Baldrige is not a big daunting thing. Use the self-assessments to see where your gaps are. That’s a good indicator of where to start." For Shapiro, the Are We Making Progress? survey proved the easiest way to begin and quickly identify areas to improve. She gave the survey to her staff members to learn how they thought the organization was doing. "Using the results from that questionnaire gave us guidance on what we needed to do to make things better," she said. "It was very clear once we got results that the animal hospitals [within the practice] had different problem areas to focus on." Writing an Organizational Profile also proved an obvious place to begin for the veterinarian. "When I started writing the Organizational Profile, it started to make things much easier. . . . [It] helped me identify who I am. I never really verbalized it. When I know what we want, it makes it really easy to figure out solutions to problems." Added Shapiro, "Everything we’ve done [with the Baldrige Criteria] has made our organization a happier place to work. We’ve identified what’s really important to us," added Shapiro. "The little bit I have done has given me so much clarity. . . . [Baldrige] has already helped us so much. . . .  I’m inspired by it." Measurement of Data The Synergy Organization uses the Baldrige Criteria to help it better understand those things that matter most to its business success and know what to do about them, in a nonprescriptive way, said Cohen. Using measurements, as outlined in Criteria category 7, "helps me to know how we’re making progress on the things that make the most sense. And helps me to connect the dots and to understand how these seemingly disconnected elements are interdependent, helping us to do the right things right the first time," he added. Freese and Nichols uses the Criteria to help it sustain a balanced approach for customers, stakeholders, and employees. According to Milrany, balanced scorecards are used to measure financial sustainability, the commitment to clients, the commitment to technical excellence, and the commitment to employees. "A sustainable organization can’t just focus on one of these," she said. In her former local county government position, Douglas said, "The Baldrige Criteria sustained us through some tough times. Data collection is big, and if you’re not collecting data quickly and analyzing and making needed changes, then you are dead in the water. I am a believer [in the Baldrige Criteria. They] help through thin times and fat times as well." When people get into the Criteria, she added, they start thinking not just about individual projects, but also about how to grow revenue. Development of Leadership Skills An unintended consequence for small businesses being mentored in Virginia was a change in leaders’ mindsets, said Garfield. One small business president said "a key learning for him was that he’d been managing his business instead of leading it." Garfield said the leader realized he wanted to align the business with his vision "in a way he might not have done if he didn’t participate [in learning the Criteria]. He learned that creating an environment for lifelong personal and organizational learning was part of his goal." Dr. Shapiro added, "Even though I am very early in [learning the Criteria] process, I have found it to be very inspirational. It has already created positive change in my organization, changed my leadership style and skills, and has even changed how I communicate with pet owners—I’m sharing with them who we are, what sets us apart, what our culture is about, and how this positively effects care. For the first time since owning a business, I feel confident in making decisions."

After reading a press release announcing the latest Weber Award winners, and noting that the Weber is modeled after the Baldrige Award, I reached out to Peter Horvath (president and CEO) and Chuck Yarris (director of quality and food safety) of Quality Chekd to find out more. What is the Weber Award? It is named after Irving B. Weber, a founding member of the Quality Chekd Board of Directors, who had the vision of producing the best dairy products in the country. The award originated in the late ‘80s and was originally a marketing opportunity for securing the trademark. But it has since become an all-encompassing award, based not just on the level of product compliance (through third-party testing) but also including leadership, customer, and employee components. Dairy Plant photo courtesy of Quality Chekd Dairies, Inc. A difference from the Baldrige Award that Horvath sees is that Weber applicants themselves are very similar, without a lot of variables in organizational products and services. However, the Baldrige Criteria has provided an example in not solely using product quality as the basis for the award. According to Horvath, no other award besides the Weber Award is recognized in the dairy industry; even companies outside of the dairy industry know of it.  It has "become a quality driver within organizations," he says, because it does translate into how well they are run. In dairy plants, "Think Weber" signs can be seen on the walls. Being modeled on the Baldrige Award helps Quality Chekd introduce the Weber Award, Horvath says: "Because you are such a high-profile award, we tell them it is like the Baldrige Award, and they understand." What are the steps of the Weber Award process? To qualify for the Weber Award, a plant has to be in the top monthly ranking for product testing; take third-party audits/certification, and add those results; add employee safety results data from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA); and then take the top three applicants, and administer a leadership survey. Next, Yarris and Horvath spend a day with top managers of award applicants to have them explain what the senior leaders are doing in terms of their organization’s mission, vision, and values and how they communicate those to employees. They are also asked to explain what their strategic planning is and how they know it is effective; quality improvements they are undertaking; employee orientation/absenteeism; communication to the night shift, the reward process, seniority, special recognition, and succession planning the safety program benchmarks being used After the leadership interviews, Horvath and Yarris  go to employees and find out if they are "walking it"; they sit down and talk with a certain percentage of employees and ask questions such as, How do you get engaged in your work? What are your company’s mission, vision, and values? The employee interview has approximately 30 questions across a broad range of topics. Next, a customer satisfaction survey is administered through a third party for consumers who have purchased the applicant company’s products. Such consumers are surveyed on the following: overall impression of the company impression of the personnel overall impression of product/service If selected, Weber Award recipients receive a trophy and a highly prized grandfather’s clock (often placed in a prominent location). Winning companies often give employees a memento and a day off or equivalent benefit. Similar to Baldrige, another of the Quality Chekd membership advantages (besides the Weber Award) is ongoing training offered through regional workshops and some onsite training for specific companies based on their need. Chuck Yarris (director of quality and safety) says a challenge for his organization is keeping interest in the Weber Award high. For example, he asks, even though these companies are doing a great job, what other criteria can raise the bar even higher? He wants Quality Chekd members to be the best (well above competitors), to be profitable, and to have a positive impact on the industry. Milk Gallons courtesy of Quality Chekd Dairies, Inc. Looking Toward the Future According to Horvath, the dairy industry is under severe pressure because the market has seen a 2-4 % decline in consumption, and input costs are high. In the squeeze, another challenge is how to avoid taking shortcuts—and not just in terms of disregarding quality. Horvath hopes to expand the Weber Award beyond the Quality Chekd community because other industry awards are just not as rigorously defined and are based more on public relations efforts. So what is the best thing about working in the dairy industry, and Quality Chekd / the Weber Award in particular? While you might guess ice cream tastings, Yarris has unique expertise in tasting buttermilk, so he always gets to try it in a production plant. In particular, he enjoys the variety of getting into the plants to do some analysis, troubleshooting, training, and meeting the night shift crew, he says. For Horvath, the best part of his 14 years with Quality Chekd is that he works with wonderful people, he says. If you would like to be a Baldrige Examiner during the next Baldrige Award process, find out more at Become an Examiner. The application for 2015 opens November 25, 2014 and closes January 8, 2015.