Posted by Christine Schaefer Leaders of Baldrige Award-winning organizations have credited their use of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence with enabling them to achieve exceptional results. They represent a range of organizations: from large to small businesses, from large health care systems to single schools. Consider the following testimonials about the value of the Baldrige framework to a high-performing hospital, a large manufacturer, a small business, and a school district, respectively: "The Criteria really focused us . … To stay on track and get results for our patients—both quality and safety—you have to have an engaged workforce. … When everyone’s engaged, we have very consistent results." (Janet Wagner, CEO, Sutter Davis Hospital, 2013 Baldrige Award recipient) "Baldrige sustains and maintains a succession of learning—a model to stay out front of constant change. It helps an organization to reset if its processes are not as efficient as they should be." (James E. Berry, President, Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, 2012 Baldrige Award recipient) "Before starting our Baldrige journey, we were working our butts off. We didn’t know Results and Impacts of Using Baldrige in K&N Restaurants how we were doing, probably above average. … Efforts were in different directions. … Baldrige brought us alignment. It is a tool to channel your efforts. … We all started rowing in the same direction. … Baldrige is the key to winning results and world-class excellence." (Ken Schiller, President, Co-Owner, and Founder, K&N Management, 2010 Baldrige Award recipient) "We’ve seen student achievement go up in ways that we never thought imaginable. We’ve become more efficient and more effective. And these successes aren’t just figures and statistics; they do change lives. And in the process, we’ve become an innovative force in education. We’re transforming how we deliver learning for our students, and that’s creating life chances, and that’s opening the door to each child’s future. For those pondering whether or not to pursue this Baldrige process, I say boldly, ‘Why wouldn’t you?’" (JoAnn Sternke, Superintendent, Pewaukee School District, 2013 Baldrige Award recipient) You can read more about the improvements and successes achieved by these and other Baldrige Award recipients in the online profiles of national role-model organizations in every sector. And you can follow these leaders by embracing the Baldrige systems approach to boosting performance excellence throughout your organization. All three sector-specific versions (business/nonprofit, education, and health care) of the 2015-2016 Baldrige Excellence Framework booklets are now available, with the release today of the education and health care editions. To paraphrase Sternke’s question, why wouldn’t you want to improve and excel, too? Editor’s Note: Listen and learn from the latest Baldrige Award-winning organizations—2014 award recipients PricewaterhouseCoopers Public Sector Practice, McLean, VA; Hill Country Memorial, Fredericksburg, TX; St. David’s HealthCare, Austin, TX; and Elevations Credit Union, Boulder, CO—at the 27th Annual Quest for Excellence® Conference in Baltimore on April 12-15, 2015.  

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey A recent study conducted by a professor at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business unveils "a framework for organizations to rediscover their potential and charge ahead using the levers of business excellence and innovation." Sunil Mithas, professor of information systems, said the framework is used by the Indian conglomerate, the Tata Group, whose revenues have multiplied tenfold since 2002. What is that framework? It’s the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, licensed and adapted by Tata into its Tata Business Excellence Model. From right to left, Sunil Mithas; Tata Group Chairman Cyrus Mistry; and Sunil Sinha, resident director for Tata Sons, Middle East and North African Region, at the Business Excellence Convention in Chennai, India. The Tata group—whose many well-known brands include Jaguar Land Rover, Taj Hotels, Tetley, and Eight O’Clock Coffee—transformed itself from a $4 billion domestic company in 1991 to a $103 billion global enterprise by 2014, with an untiring focus on business excellence—a transformation derived from the Baldrige Criteria. According to Mithas, the "Baldrige Criteria’s power" helped the Indian holding company transform itself. One key factor was Tata’s "relentless focus on tracking and improving every measurable attribute of corporate excellence, from customer satisfaction to employee morale to strategy development and implementation. As it happens, Tata’s corporate leaders were greatly influenced by the principles behind the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. . . . Because of its broad holdings and massive scale, the Tata Group is sometimes called ‘the GE of India.’ But in terms of growth, if not sheer size, Tata outsmarts its American cousin. GE had revenues of $146 billion in 2013, up from $54 billion in 1991. Tata lags GE at $103 billion today, but that’s up from a mere $5.8 billion in 1992." Mithas recently discussed his Tata-based study in a podcast: "Innovation Engine." According to the episode description, the podcast discusses what companies can learn from the Tata Group’s "ascension to becoming one of the world’s most well-known—and profitable—businesses in the world, . . . [discussing] the Malcolm Baldridge framework for measuring innovation, why it’s important to have a long-term vision for innovation, and a number of different innovation competitions that Tata has set up to encourage innovation within its companies."

Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon For those very careful readers of the Baldrige Excellence Framework, you will notice a subtle change in 2015-2016. We no longer refer to the framework as representing the leading edge of validated management practice. Are you now thinking we have abandoned our guiding principle for revision of the Criteria? Are you wondering what guides us now? Read on! Our definition of management has always been in the context of organizational performance management which begins with the role of senior leaders. Over the course of time the word "management" has taken on a meaning in many organizational environments as the work of front-line and mid-level supervisors and decision makers, in contrast to leadership who set the strategy and inspire the organization to achieve. The first few sentences in the definition of management in the Business Dictionary illustrate this point, "The organization and coordination of the activities of a business in order to achieve defined objectives. Management is often included as a factor of production along with‚ machines, materials, and money." While that is clearly not the context in which our guiding principle is viewed, it is the reality of many organizations today and we must be clear in our intent. Baldrige starts with the role and actions of senior leaders and encompasses the strategic and operational aspects of organizational success. That posture is reflected, more clearly we believe, in our new guiding mantra contained in the 2015-2016 Baldrige Excellence Framework. The Baldrige Framework represents the leading edge of validated leadership and performance practice. Baldrige starts with the key roles of leadership: setting vision and values, exhibiting high ethical conduct, communicating, and guiding performance to achieve the mission. And it is an a-to-z guide that ends with measuring all key dimensions of organizational performance: product, process, customer, workforce, leadership and governance, and financial and market. It is also an organizational maturity model that unites the leadership with performance in an integration dimension that links results to the responsibilities of leaders and their role in creating change. Baldrige represents the leading edge of validated leadership and performance practice. We have not abandoned our guiding principle, we have made it more explicit. Is your organization on this journey?

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey On Sundays at 7 pm MT (9 pm ET), you can listen from anywhere in the world to hear best practices on performance improvement, results from using the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, and, yes, maybe even a cowboy song or two. The radio show "Performance Excellence USA" is hosted by Julia Galbadon, president/CEO of Quality New Mexico, a Baldrige-based state program that is a member of the Alliance for Performance Excellence; Galbadon also currently serves on the ASQ board of directors. It airs on 770KKOB; on the Internet, the show can be found at http://www.770kkob.com/ and www.iheartradio.com. Using an interview format, Galbadon welcomes guests from all over the country, including members of the Baldrige community—award recipients, her colleagues at other Baldrige-based Alliance programs, the Baldrige director, ASQ leaders, and Baldrige examiners—as well as other esteemed performance improvement and management experts who share their expertise and experience. "The whole purpose," she said, "is learning best practices. . . . My guests are proud to share their stories; they believe in continual learning and sharing, so we can all learn and get better." This spring, Galbadon will host a radio show with author Jim Collins, whose books include Good to Great and How the Mighty Fall. Collins, who has spoken at a Quality New Mexico conference, will talk about leadership, management, strategy, and the concepts in his books. Galbadon said she’ll also ask him to elaborate on his quote, "I see the Baldrige process as a powerful set of mechanisms for disciplined people engaged in disciplined thought and taking disciplined action to create great organizations that produce exceptional results." Her radio shows have also included an interview with Mark Blazey, president of Quantum Performance Group, who often trains examiners on the Baldrige Criteria. They spoke about what senior leaders need to know about performance improvement and the value of using the Criteria for Performance Excellence. Blazey also talked about ways to get started with the Criteria and resources available to organizations. Galbadon has also hosted Baldrige Award and NM Performance Excellence Award winners and the Baldrige family, including Malcolm Baldrige’s daughter Megan and sister Letitia. (Gabaldon first met Midge, Malcolm’s widow, at a 1995 Quality NM conference during a special "Salute to Malcolm Baldrige.") Gabaldon visited often with Letitia and Midge at Quest for Excellence© conferences and felt an instant connection with the women. In fact, Letitia was the first guest when the radio show changed its name to "Performance Excellence USA." Galbadon said her most proud accomplishments from the radio show have come from facilitating connections. "I love connecting people; I’m a connector. . . . I’ve had the opportunity to showcase leaders from across the nation who are passionate about performance excellence and about making a difference in our communities, states, and nation." And these connections, she feels, have been a major accomplishment, especially with the world-wide audience available on the radio. On the show, she often has separate guests in studio and on the phone who discover networking opportunities and connect after the show, learning from each other and sharing. "Baldrige Award recipients have been so gracious in sharing everything and their time. . . . They are incredible leaders," she said. "I’m very, very proud that I know all of these people and am able to connect with them and invite them to speak in New Mexico." For example, Baldrige Award-winning CEOs Bob Pence of Freese and Nichols, Terry May of MESA, and Janet Wager of Sutter David Hospital have been recent radio guests. Galbadon said when Wagner spoke recently, her local guest Megan Baldrige’s eyes lit up, hearing about Sutter Davis’s results with patient safety and satisfaction. Megan went on to write an article for the Albuquerque Journal about what she heard. It’s a "very positive environment of performance excellence," said Galbadon. "After a while, this whole experience of being a Baldrige examiner, serving on the Baldrige Board of Overseers and Alliance Board, and being involved in this journey, it becomes a patriotic thing. . . . On a personal note, that’s how I feel these days. . . . It’s a very, very positive environment of people working together to help each other improve." Galbadon added, "Those connections to me are just so invaluable. As a teacher at heart, I find it so rewarding to be a conduit to help make these connections happen." One of her favorite radio shows, Galbadon  said, was when she featured Baldrige-Award winning Director Dr. Mike Sather of the VA Cooperative Studies Program Clinical Research Pharmacy Coordinating Center with cowboy singer Syd Masters. Sather, who is known for his presentations on the "Code of the West," especially enjoyed the in-studio songs by Masters, including the official New Mexico cowboy song "Under New Mexico Skies." Galbadon has hosted more than 700 radio and several TV shows in New Mexico since 1977. In 1999, in an effort to promote the value of Quality New Mexico, Galbadon said she approached a local radio station and the then-named "Quality New Mexico Radio Show" was born. Want to share your success stories on the radio? Contact Julia at julia@quality-newmexico.org.

Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon The Baldrige Executive Fellows just completed another successful meeting. I am always amazed at how much I learn at these meetings from the Baldrige Award recipients’ senior leaders who give presentations, as well as from the Baldrige Fellows. The most recent session was hosted by Ritz-Carlton; they were joined by K&N Management as the second Baldrige Award recipient organization. This session was focused on customer and workforce excellence. There were many great insights, but I would like to focus on a particularly important one discussed by Ken Schiller, co-owner of K&N. He shared an important attribute of successful leaders, caring. He used a quote from Theodore Roosevelt, "Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care." Both K&N and Ritz-Carlton clearly demonstrate a caring environment for all employees. Ritz-Carlton starts with a written Employee Promise and a Motto that is practiced every day. The Motto states, "We are Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen." Ritz-Carlton’s Employee Promise states that their Ladies and Gentlemen are their most important resource and promises to foster "a work environment where diversity is valued, quality of life is enhanced, and individual aspirations are fulfilled." K&N makes a Team Member Promise, "By applying the fundamentals of trust, respect, honesty, and leadership we promise to create an environment that preserves our core values, encourages personal growth, and inspires professional excellence." Leadership’s job is to delight Team Members through "training and coaching, feedback, communication, and providing a fun, safe work environment." At K&N Management, 70% of the managers started as hourly employees. In a Forbes blog post last year, John Hall stated that employees who feel valued and appreciated by leaders are much more likely to go above and beyond expectations of them. He discusses ways to show how leaders care for employees. Included in his recommendations are: look for ways to help with personal issues (K&N has a Team Member care team that is available to all Team Members), back them up with clients (Ritz-Carlton will help guests to stay elsewhere if they mistreat their Ladies and Gentlemen), and be real and transparent with employees. You can read all eleven recommendations in Hall’s blog post. You can hear from Ritz-Carlton and K&N Management in person at the 27th Annual Quest for Excellence Conference. Both organizations will be presenting and participating in a town hall session on the Workforce of the Future. Two Baldrige Core Values are Valuing People and Ethics and Transparency. They summarize the concepts discussed in this Blogrige post. How does your organization value its people, exhibit high ethics, and act transparently?

Posted by Christine Schaefer Here’s a question for those who have noted the very different settings of the latest two Baldrige Award recipients in health care: Do they bring to mind Donny and Marie Osmond for you, too? That analogy is playfully suggested by the author of a recent article in the American Hospital Association’s Hospitals & Health Networks® magazine featuring Hill Country Memorial and St. David’s HealthCare. "One’s a little bit country, and the other’s a little bit rock and roll," writes Paul Barr, contrasting the pastoral setting of Hill Country Memorial in Fredericksburg, Texas, with St. David’s HealthCare’s basis in Austin, Texas, a city renowned for live music. Barr describes the different ways the two organizations have used the Baldrige framework to improve their performance and the similar length of their quests for excellence. He also highlights impressive results each organization has achieved—in the top decile of health care organizations nationwide. Here are some examples of such results, which can be found in the organizational profiles of award recipients on the Baldrige website (linked above): The composite performance of St. David’s HealthCare for the past five years on core measures reported by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has been at or better than the top 10 percent of health care systems nationally for each disease group. David’s HealthCare also has ranked in the American College of Cardiology’s top 10 percent since 2010 for its "door-to-balloon" time in treating the most severe form of heart attack, in which the coronary artery is completely blocked off by a clot. (The "door-to-balloon time" refers to the amount of time between a heart attack patient’s arrival at the hospital and the point when intervention such as a balloon angioplasty is received.) Hill Country Memorial has consistently scored in the top 10 percent nationally (in data maintained by Healthgrades) for patient safety, general surgery, gastrointestinal care, and joint replacement. Hill Country Memorial also has consistently ranked in the top 10 percent nationally on CMS clinical process measures, health care outcomes and patient experience measures. In 2013, CMS ranked Hill Country Memorial higher than the top 10 percent nationally for patient experience measures such as "overall rating of hospital," "communication about medications," "pain management" and "responsiveness of hospital staff." You can learn more about and from these two role-model health care organizations at the Baldrige Program’s Quest for Excellence® Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, on April 12-15. The annual best-practice-sharing conference will feature leadership panels and Criteria category-specific sessions led by representatives of all four 2014 Baldrige Award recipients, including PricewaterhouseCoopers Public Sector Practice and Elevations Credit Union. To be clear, Donny and Marie aren’t scheduled to perform at the 2015 Quest conference. But the newest Baldrige Award winners are sure to be hits with those of you who wish to learn about performance improvement from the best in your industry.  

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey In 2014, PricewaterhouseCoopers Public Sector Practice (PwC PSP) became the first large service organization to win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 15 years. But according to Scott McIntyre, managing partner and leader of PwC PSP, the nation’s highest award for organizational excellence is just one milestone in the group’s ongoing quality story. In an interview on Federal News Radio, McIntyre said, "When you embark on a journey of quality like this, it doesn’t end with the award. It’s a great milestone, a terrific reprieve, and something we’re proud of, but it is certainly just a milestone along the journey of continuous quality." And PwC PSP, a consulting and auditing firm for federal, state, and local governments, already has much to show for its journey: one of the fastest growing consulting firms serving the federal government for the period 2011-2014, scores rating it as "exceptional" or "very good" increasing from 50 percent in fiscal year 2008 to levels at or near 100 percent for fiscal years 2010 through 2014, revenue results from $41 million in fiscal year 2005 to $265 million in fiscal year 2014, and  staff certifications increasing 424 percent from fiscal year 2008 to fiscal year 2014. McIntyre was asked why the group chose the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence as a model for improvement: "We wanted to build a business that served the U.S. federal government in a distinctive way, and one of the things that we thought would help us achieve that would to be very customer oriented, very agile, and very flexible. Adopting the Baldrige Criteria and building our business and our operations around those criteria has helped enable us to do that." He said that adopting the Criteria really helped the group become more agile. He added, "the Criteria help you link your strategy, your human capital process, your leadership development process, and all of your core operations together and help them focus on what your customers actually want. The discipline forces you first and foremost to really learn and know what your customers, what your clients really value, and it forces you to drive your processes around adding value rather than adding layers of bureaucracy." The radio interview focused on the Baldrige Award process. Said McIntyre, "Candidly, having gone through the process, we’ve learned firsthand how disciplined you have to be to adopt these Criteria and how much of an impact they can have on your business." McIntyre described writing the Baldrige Award application as a "self-audit." It begins with writing the Organizational Profile, a comprehensive description of your industry, core values, organizational strategy, and operating model. The application then dives deeply into each of the seven areas of the Baldrige Criteria that are ultimately evaluated by the Baldrige examiners. The Baldrige application gives you an opportunity to explore linkages among areas of your operations and how each adds value, he said; "You need to articulate in the application how each area is reinforced by and related to the other, how you continuously improve each one." Top-scoring Baldrige applications are selected for site visits, where Baldrige examiners visit a company’s operations. "They put you on the spot. And I think that’s a good thing," he said. "They put you on the spot to defend your business. They make you think hard about the business, and the process helps not only define the application and the claims that you are making in the application but makes you think through all the operating imperatives of the business as well." The radio interview highlighted two elements of PwC PSP’s operations—customer engagement and knowledge management—that were given high scores during the Baldrige Award process. McIntyre defined customer engagement as first knowing what customers/clients want and then segmenting your market. The segmentation helps you know what services you are going to offer to which customers and how those services are going to add value. "For us, customer engagement starts with knowledge of who the customer is, knowing what they want but also defining what we’re going to do for the customer that adds value and constantly measuring and analyzing that and occasionally changing it as we learn what the customers’ needs really are," he said. McIntyre also offered advice regarding metrics: start with and focus on a simple cohort of metrics and don’t over analyze. He said the group is also constantly retraining and educating its people, helping them seek certifications, and ensuring they have a rich learning and development environment to continue their career growth. Added McIntyre, "[Winning the Baldrige Award] is really an accolade to all of our people. It builds their credentials while they work at PwC or if they go on to other things. They are all part of a successful Baldrige application. They were all part of a quality journey, a quality story that is heavily endorsed by receipt of this award. We’re excited for them and what it means for their careers, what it means to their credibility in the market." Learn more best practices from PwC PSP and from the other 2014 Baldrige Award recipients by attending the Baldrige Program’s next Quest for Excellence® Conference in April 2015.

Posted by Christine Schaefer Last year, two financial services organizations earned national recognition as Baldrige Award winners: Elevations Credit Union (ECU), headquartered in Boulder, Colorado; and PricewaterhouseCoopers Public Sector Practice (PwC PSP), based in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. No other organization in the same industry had received the prestigious national award for high performance since New Mexico-based Los Alamos National Bank did so in 2000. We recently highlighted PwC PSP’s accomplishments, so today’s post will focus on ECU. The member-owned, nonprofit credit union serves more than 106,000 people and employs 332 in four Colorado counties. It offers checking and savings accounts, auto loans, student loans, mortgages, home-equity lines of credit, business loans, credit cards, and financial planning services. And it counted assets of over $1.4 billion, gross revenue of $66 million, and net revenue of $9.5 million in 2013, shortly before applying for the Baldrige Award. In a recent interview with a news provider within the credit union industry, ECU Vice President of Business and Community Development Dennis Paul credited his organization’s use of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence with helping it "compete more effectively in the face of stiff competition." Following is an excerpt from the CUToday.info article that describes the dramatic results ECU achieved after it adopted the Baldrige framework in 2008: Prior to [ECU’s] employing the Baldrige framework, membership growth was 1%. From 2009-2013, that number soared to 6%. In those same time periods, credit unions in Elevations’ peer group went from 3% membership growth to 1%. More importantly, the credit union became more profitable, seeing capital growth skyrocket from 1% from 2004-2008, to 13% from 2009-13. In those same periods, peer group capital remained flat at 7% growth. "For us, it’s about excellence, about developing the best possible products and services to improve the lives of our member-owners," said Paul. Here are examples of other gains ECU has made in various performance areas. (More great results are conveyed in the organization’s profile on our website.) ECU’s wealth management rate (assets under management divided by total credit union assets) rose from just over 14 percent in 2011 to 21 percent in 2014. ECU’s mortgage market production volume increased from 1,123 loans in 2011 to 2,307 in 2014 (annualized). Courtesy of Elevations Credit Union ECU’s survey results have recorded favorable trends in employee engagement and satisfaction. The rate of respondents indicating that ECU "has a winning team" increased from 68 percent in 2011 to 85 percent in 2014; the rate who agreed ECU "builds careers" increased from 58 percent to 70 percent; the proportion who agreed ECU "makes me proud to be part of this organization" increased from 82 percent to 90 percent; and the proportion who agreed that ECU "gives me the responsibility and freedom to do my job" increased from 77 percent to 88 percent in the same period. As a result of ECU’s Business Process Management (BPM) methodology to foster improvement and innovation throughout the credit union, BPM has developed innovations such as Branch 2.0, a nontraditional branch concept that "utilizes a consultative approach emphasizing quality member engagement, provides financial solutions in a user friendly environment through a one-on-one advice-giving exchange, and enhances access to mobile, online and advanced-function ATM services." BPM also has enabled ECU to improve its performance on measures of process efficiency. For example, mortgage lending cycle time (days from locked to funded) decreased from 49 days in 2012 to 37 days in 2014, and consumer lending cycle time (receipt of application to time of funding) by product improved since 2013 for second mortgage, personal, auto, and Visa loans and products—even with increasing volumes. In addition, the monthly rate of mortgage loans per closer increased from 90 in 2012 to 100 in 2014, compared to a national benchmark of 72. You can learn more about ECU this spring at the Baldrige Program’s annual Quest for Excellence® Conference. Leaders of all four 2014 Baldrige Award recipients (including PSP, Hill Country Memorial, and St. David’s HealthCare) will share information about their organizations’ practices and learning as they progressed to the highest level of performance excellence.

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey The beauty of the systems approach in the Baldrige Excellence Framework is that it depicts the interwoven connections of an organization. In any business, service, nonprofit, school, or health care organization, decisions impact operations, which impact other decisions and operations elsewhere in the organization; this interconnectedness impacts resource use and strategy, as well as other elements of the organization, ultimately impacting its future success. Within the Baldrige Excellence Framework, the threads of several management and leadership concepts can be followed to see how they impact or are impacted by different areas of an organization; doing this can yield quite a few insights into the importance of alignment. In some places, the Baldrige Excellence Framework is even explicit in how the concept should be used (e.g., in decision making or strategy) or where the concept might be leveraged or capitalized on as an organizational asset. For example, let’s say you wanted to learn more about the concept "core competencies." What are they? In what areas of a management system are they important? How do they impact other operations across the system? Using the index (or the search function of a PDF file) in the Baldrige Excellence Framework as my guide, I can track the role of core competencies in an organization: In P.1, Organizational Description, core competencies are a key organizational characteristic with a direct relationship to an organization’s mission. In fact, a note in this item explains that core competencies, an organization’s areas of greatest expertise, are central to fulfilling that mission. In 1.1, Senior Leadership, core competencies are noted as a key factor in an organization’s sustainability. In 1.2, Governance and Societal Responsibilities, core competencies become one way to determine areas of community support (i.e., leveraging core competencies to ensure the most appropriate use of resources). In 2.1, Strategy Development, core competencies are used to make decisions on outsourcing, including which supplier and partner to choose. With a connection to work systems, core competencies are also considered when thinking about future strategy and challenges, as well as new core competencies that may be needed by the organization down the road. In this item, as elsewhere, the Criteria focus on "capitalizing" and "leveraging" core competencies—a clear indicator of their importance in making strategic decisions and a reminder that what the organization defined as its core competencies back in P.1 should be as accurate and appropriate as possible. (The organization’s leaders might find themselves reconsidering the core competencies as they complete this exercise.) In 5.1, Workforce Environment, core competencies are part of work accomplishment. In 5.2, Workforce Engagement, they are addressed as part of the learning and development system. In 6.1, Work Processes, the enhancement of core competencies is considered in product and process performance. In 7.4, Leadership and Governance Results, results for building and strengthening core competencies are requested. Tracking the concept of core competencies throughout the Criteria really highlights their importance as part of strategy and an area of great focus for an organization. It’s clear that this concept, as well as others, is a key business attribute that impacts the entire organization’s system as a whole—not just one area of operations. This of course is part of the systems perspective of the Criteria: "With a systems perspective, you use your measures, indicators, core competencies, and organizational knowledge to build your key strategies, link these strategies with your work systems and key processes, and align your resources to improve your overall performance and your focus on customers and stakeholders." Other concepts that are woven throughout the Criteria include innovation, use of data and information, and change readiness. What other key concepts might you follow as threads through the Criteria?

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey In 1995, for the first time in its 100-year history, 2010 Baldrige Award recipient Freese and Nichols, Inc. posted a negative profit—-1.7 percent—and its morale was trending in the wrong direction. In 1996, the engineering and architectural firm’s CEO, who sat on the board of a local hospital, learned about how the hospital was using the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence to improve its performance and thus embracing continuous improvement (CI). In the Baldrige spirit of sharing best practices, the CEO brought the Baldrige Criteria home to his own company, and the firm quickly regained profitability and more. That history is outlined in the recent article "Human Side: Create a Culture of Continuous Improvement" in Municipal Sewer & Water, a monthly magazine for the sanitary and water maintenance industry. "We didn’t start out to win a Baldrige Award," explains Robert Pence, P.E., BCEE, Freese and Nichols’ current President and CEO, who is also on the Baldrige Program Board of Overseers. "We just wanted to implement a continuous improvement management system that would measure the things we do. . . . When we found gaps between our goals and how we really were doing, CI showed us how to do root-cause analysis and take action to fix things, then go back and measure them to make sure they’re fixed." According to the article, results have been impressive: The firm regained profitability in 1996. Bookings in 2014 hit more than $96 million, compared to $20 million in 1995. Employee turnover over the past 10 years has averaged less than half the industry’s national average (6 or 7 percent compared to up to 16 percent). The percentage of new employees who stay for two years stands at around 88 percent. In the last 15 years, client satisfaction increased to 4.73 from 4.4. Overall Client Satisfaction Survey Results 2002-2013 "A review of financial results during the 1970s and 1980s revealed that Freese and Nichols did well when the economy fared well and poor when it was poor," writes the article’s author. "But ever since the company embarked on its CI journey, it performs solidly no matter how the economy performs." And that solid performance and CI culture continues today, leading to a strategic expansion to North Carolina and enhanced customer relationships, especially with municipal clients. According to Mike Wayts, P.E., CFM, North Carolina Division Manager, and Cindy Milrany, Chief Financial Officer, maintaining the firm’s culture—which helped it win a Baldrige Award—during the expansion is very important and part of the firm’s strategy and grass-roots efforts. Strategic planning and ensuring that the workforce always has growth opportunities are important to Freese and Nichols, said Milrany; "You can’t provide everything for your employees if you are not giving them what they need for growth. A new office like North Carolina provided a great opportunity." Wayts added, "If we’re not growing as a whole company then we’re not supplying growth potential." The geographic expansion has helped to offer new opportunities. Freese and Nichols has already begun the process of partnering with universities, including offering monetary support through scholarships and recruiting fairs, and supporting the local community through board support and donations to the YMCA, for example. Wayts said what was particularly important to the firm was bringing its CI culture to North Carolina. "Some of the core things that make the company who we are and helped us win Baldrige, we’re making sure we apply in North Carolina," he said, citing its customer service hedgehog concept, sales system, and focus on employee satisfaction as setting it apart from competitors. Among offices, the processes and technical excellence program are the same, he said, so that new employees and long-time employees experience the same culture and can work together seamlessly across offices. Milrany added, "We do a great job of deploying consistent processes across corporate functions and technical disciplines." In fact, she said Freese and Nichols conducts a culture analysis every three years; "It’s almost scary how consistent our culture is across offices." Municipal clients also continue to be a growth area for the firm, which is offering services in North Carolina related to water and waste-water utilities, water resources, storm water, program management, and construction services. "We really had no idea how [receiving the Baldrige Award] would open a different kind of relationship with some of our clients," said Milrany. "We were very engaged with helping the city of Irving receive the Baldrige Award," as well as other cities on a Baldrige journey of improvement. Milrany said Freese and Nichols uses an integrated sales system with gold sheets for its clients: level 1 of the system means providing commodity services, up to level 5 of the  system that directs the firm to help the client improve its own organization. "Baldrige helps us to have that level-5 relationship with a lot of our clients," she said. "Not all of them would tell you they are on the Baldrige journey, but a lot of them would tell you we believe in CI or performance excellence, and they’ve been able to use the Criteria to enhance that journey that they’re on."