Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey A few years ago, Director Emeritus Harry Hertz of the Baldrige Program wrote the short brochure "Baldrige Asks, ‘How do You Know?'" to make the case that the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence can guide an organization in knowing whether it is high-performing and innovative, whether it is achieving world-class performance, and whether it is satisfying its customers and keeping its competitors at bay. But, obviously, to answer the question you have to know what best practices and results are out there, among your competitors and among organizations in other industries. The Criteria define benchmarking as identifying processes and results that represent best practices and performance for similar activities, inside or outside your industry. If you don’t benchmark, how will you know? But how do you make benchmarking an efficient, value-added activity and not just something else to do? At the upcoming Quest for Excellence® conference, we’ll have an opportunity to learn how at "The Power of Benchmarking" with Allyson L. Young, SPHR, HR & Brand Director of Baldrige Award recipient K&N Management, whose vision is "to become world famous by delighting one guest at a time." Her top-three tips on benchmarking: Benchmarking is critical to maintaining a competitive edge. Studying best practices keeps you ahead of the game. Effective benchmarking creates beneficial partnerships and networking opportunities. Internally benchmarking best practices is as effective as externally benchmarking in driving continuous improvement. K&N Management received the Baldrige Award in the service industry, where its Rudy’s Country Stores and Bar-B-Q Mighty Fine Burgers, Fries and Shakes, as fast-casual restaurants in the Austin, TX, area, have significantly outperformed local competitors and national chains. Within the service industry, Young offers three key ways that organizations can benefit from use of the Baldrige framework: The Baldrige Framework promotes innovation, which promotes learning and continuous improvement in every part of the organization. Many small businesses, especially restaurants, are family-owned-and-operated and are simply reactive to the environment. When applying the Baldrige Framework, leaders become more disciplined in terms of long-term thinking, which results in being more proactive in problem solving and continuous improvement. Many business owners are concerned about their future and sustainability. The Baldrige Framework provides the guidelines for operational excellence, which results in long-term profitability and sustainability. What else will you learn if you attend this session on harnessing the power of benchmarking? How to be intentional when benchmarking. Put together a plan and then put it into action How to use strategic planning to determine gaps to benchmark To learn from this and other sessions featuring role-model Baldrige Award recipients sharing best practices, register for the Quest for Excellence, April 12-15, in Baltimore, MD.

Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon I have recently read numerous copies of the same short blog post on different web sites. The blog post says there is one simple question to ask that will give your organization a competitive advantage if you act on it quickly. The question is: "What do your customers want more than anything?" While listening to customers and meeting or exceeding their desires is a key consideration in strategy, the 2015-2016 Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence provide a systems perspective to organizational performance leadership and strategy that cover all dimensions contributing to ongoing organizational success. So at the risk of complicating what has been put forward as a one question path to success, let me propose five additional questions to consider. 1. What is your organization’s vision? What is your organization’s North Star? Where do your leaders envision the future of your organization will be? What is your organization striving to become? 2. How are you thinking strategically? How are you scanning your environment to understand opportunities and threats? How are you looking for blind spots that could surprise you? How do you remain agile, so you can address technological or economic changes? 3. What are your work systems for the future? How will you efficiently produce your products and services in the future and protect your intellectual property? What work will be done by your employees? What will you do through partnerships, outsourcing, or your supply chain? 4. How are you building organizational knowledge? How are you capturing the knowledge of your employees and sharing it in your organization? How are you helping your employees learn and develop for the future? How are you innovating? 5. How are you assuring the resources to implement your plans? How are you making the finances and people available to make sure you can accomplish your plans? Is your organization set for success? Are you looking at customer desires only or are you addressing all six questions? If you would like to hear from some organizations that are addressing all six questions in role model fashion, join us at Quest for Excellence 27!  

How do you measure a CEO’s impact? In November 2014, Harvard Business Review (HBR) ranked CEOs according to "increases their companies have seen in total shareholder return and market capitalization." Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com earned the top ranking. But as Charles Fombrun points out in an HBR blog, "Companies now need to understand what value they are creating, not only for their investors, but also for their employees, customers, and society at large." When HBR asked Reputation Institute to create a broader measure of CEO performance, it came up with a performance index that included a score for each company’s workplace, citizenship, and governance. Reputation Institute then re-rated the CEOs using a combined ranking. The results? "Companies that deliver strong financial results do not always have good reputations with the public, and vice versa." Amazon.com’s CEO fell two places in the ranking, to number 3. The biggest changes in ranking were for Monsanto, which fell 74 places, and Volkswagen, which rose 68 places. Fombrun says, "The fact that financial performance and non-financial performance reputation do not correlate among HBR’s top 100 CEOs underscores why it is so important to keep refining our non-financial metrics and ensuring their rigor. . . . A great CEO’s legacy is never as one-dimensional as the ledger." How do you come up with and refine your own set of nonfinancial and financial metrics? The Baldrige Excellence Framework and its Criteria for Performance Excellence focus you on just this composite of metrics: product and process, customer, workforce, and leadership and governance results, as well as financial and market results. Said Ken Schiller, co-owner of Baldrige Award recipient K&N Management, "Personally, I measure [success] by, are we achieving excellence? . . . But I don’t focus primarily on profitability or growth. I focus on, are we achieving excellence? And the means we use to do that is delighting every guest that walks in our door." In addition, "I consider my most important job as an owner is to create an environment that attracts A-players and then to recruit them, select them, and make sure that they stay." This attention to a broad set of measures doesn’t mean that K&N’s financial results have suffered: in the years before receiving the award, K&N’s restaurants significantly outperformed local competitors and national chains in sales. They also topped the industry standard for profit. For additional examples of organizations that track a composite of results, see the profiles of Baldrige Award recipients Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, MESA, and PricewaterhouseCoopers Public Sector Practice, among others. And see the Baldrige Excellence Framework booklet or the Baldrige Excellence Builder for key questions that will help you decide what metrics you should be tracking.

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey In the steel industry, heavy machinery, hazardous energies, falls, heat stress, and noise and hearing issues are common dangers; unfortunately, safety incidents are also all too common. Luckily for their employees, some steel businesses see workforce safety as their first and foremost priority. Baldrige Award recipient PRO-TEC Coating Company processes steel, including advanced high-strength grades, to help automakers build cars that are lighter and safer. It also focuses on safety as its number-one priority. This was made evident in the recent launch of a new facility that included the small business increasing its workforce by 33% and its product capacity by 50%. With all of these increases, how did PRO-TEC continue to ensure the safety of its workforce? At the upcoming Quest for Excellence® conference, Eric Franks, PRO-TEC’s manager of technology and quality assurance, will talk about "Addressing Workforce Challenges To Launch Our New Facility." And the insights he will present in regards to safety at PRO-TEC are impressive. According to Franks, On December 29, 2014, we marked ten years since our last lost work day (>5.4 million man-hours and still ongoing). We finished 2014 with zero Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recordables (still ongoing). Our contractors working on-site have gone the last two years without an OSHA recordable (still ongoing). Franks offers three tips in regards to safety: As safety is our number-one priority, don’t lose sight of what is most important, and never miss an opportunity to reinforce the message. Hire for attitude first, then aptitude (we’ve used behavioral-based interviewing since the beginning in 1992). Align expectations to allow Associates to know what is expected of them, how to measure and improve their work, why it’s important, and how it aligns with organizational goals. PRO-TEC, which won the Baldrige Award in 2007, continues to use the Baldrige Excellence Framework as a reference for continuous improvement, and other small businesses, as well as organizations across all industries, can apply lessons learned. For example, Franks says that by performing a self-assessment using the Baldrige framework, an organization can begin to understand at a holistic level what may be an appropriate balance in order to establish priorities to make the best use of its limited resources. In addition, there is great value in  Leadership Team members filling out the Organizational Profile to end up with a common understanding of the environment, relationships, competitive environment, strategic context, and performance improvement system(s) for the organization. He adds, having seen the benefits of the first two steps, an organization should take advantage of the Baldrige-based Alliance for Performance Excellence state/regional program in its area for an award application and the feedback that will follow. To learn from this and other sessions featuring role-model Baldrige Award recipients sharing best practices, register for the Quest for Excellence, April 12-15, in Baltimore, MD.

Posted by Christine Schaefer The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company has long demonstrated an organizational culture based on strong customer service. It received the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award twice. And it has also earned hotel industry recognition for top customer satisfaction. So when an organization wants to learn how to build and sustain a culture with a strong customer focus and results reflecting service excellence, The Ritz-Carlton is a good source of best practices. To learn about and share such practices, I recently talked to Jamey Lutz, area performance improvement manager for The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. Lutz was director of quality at a Ritz property in Florida when the company received its second Baldrige Award in 1999. In that position, Lutz supervised all property-related quality and customer service initiatives. He also directed hotel training and preparation in advance of the company’s selection as a Baldrige Award recipient that year. As Lutz explained, The Ritz-Carlton culture is built on a framework of high standards that were established from the company’s outset. "All of our success was built on a very simple framework—the Gold Standards. The Gold Standards encompass The Ritz-Carlton motto ("Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen"); three essential service steps (give a warm welcome, anticipate guest needs, and provide a fond farewell); a credo statement outlining the hotel’s commitment to its guests; and the Employee Promise, a statement expressing the hotel’s commitment to its employees. Twelve Service Values constitute a final component of the Gold Standards. Those values are conveyed in statements such as "I build strong relationships and create Ritz-Carlton guests for life" and "I own and immediately resolve guest problems." Lutz stressed that the Gold Standards have continually been "reinforced and enlivened in the company." The company reinforces them through such frequent and regular events as daily 15- to 20-minute hotel line-ups consisting of all Ritz-Carlton employees around the world. At each of these line-ups, Lutz explained, in addition to discussing logistical issues, the employees review one of the Service Values and "enliven" other components of the Gold Standards through discussion and role playing. Other practices for reinforcing the company’s core values and standards include mandating that the Credo Card be included as part of employee uniforms. The Ritz-Carlton Credo Card is part of employees’ uniform. Image used with permission of the Ritz-Carlton. "We can never allow our core values to be compromised. They are the basics outlining what we stand for," said Lutz. "If you don’t have the basics down—those minimum standards that you are continuously striving to perfect, you’re never going to realize the long-term goals and aspirations of your company." Lutz shared the following tips for other organizations to build and sustain a culture of excellent customer service: 1. Shoot for the heart: Lutz explained that The Ritz-Carlton prioritizes the selection and recruitment of "world-class ladies and gentlemen" (in keeping with its motto). "You can teach someone the technical skills for a position or a role, but you can’t train them to have a sincere, caring attitude for others. Particularly for customer-facing roles and frontline positions, we’re looking for someone with a service mentality. "If you don’t have that genuine desire to serve, it’s not going to come across as authentic, and our guests will know it." 2. Train and develop employees to be able to sustain high standards for service: For example, the company provides extensive training around the three steps of service outlined in the Gold Standards, said Lutz. 3. Implement rewards and recognition programs for employees to sustain the expected performance in relation to service components: Lutz advises building rewards and recognition components to address the types of customer service behaviors that your organization seeks to have your employees demonstrate. If a Ritz-Carlton employee is observed doing something well, he or she can receive a First-Class Card as a form of kudos and recognition. Such cards also give employees opportunities to win perks such as a free dinner or movie ticket through regular drawings. At a higher level, The Ritz-Carlton’s "Five Star" award program provides sizeable cash rewards for those who demonstrate internal or external service excellence on multiple occasions. 4. Use the Baldrige Excellence Framework for ongoing improvement: Beyond the basic cultural framework provided by the Gold Standards, the Baldrige Excellence Framework "gives us a blueprint for ongoing success," said Lutz. "Baldrige provides a framework to get to a higher level of organizational performance." He affirmed that the benefit of using the Baldrige framework is more fundamental than being recognized for winning the prestigious national award. A key benefit is that an organization "establishes a baseline of where you are as a company," he said. He added that the feedback that The Ritz-Carlton got the first time it applied for the Baldrige Award was essential to building its understanding of its performance. Lutz also offered the insight that an organization’s quest to build a culture of excellence in customer service is "a marathon, not a sprint." "You can’t build a world-class culture overnight," said Lutz. "It has to be built and reinforced from the highest levels of the organization. It’s an ongoing, unrelenting commitment to excellence, and it never ends." Lutz will deliver a presentation on building and sustaining a customer-focused culture at the Baldrige Program’s upcoming Quest for Excellence® conference. To learn from this and other sessions featuring role-model Baldrige Award recipients sharing best practices, register for the Quest for Excellence, April 12-15, in Baltimore, MD.

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey A new year brings with it an opportunity to be grateful for your many blessings. At the Baldrige Program, one of our blessings has to be the engaged community of Baldrige practitioners—folks who have served as examiners at all levels, across the country; who not only understand but have often mastered how to use the Baldrige Excellence Framework, which includes the Criteria for Performance Excellence; and who share a spirit of giving back to help others improve and, so doing, help the nation. Not too long ago, I came across an online post by Baldrige alumnus examiner Suresh Nirody, assistant vice president supply chain for Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. He shared a novel way to use the Baldrige Criteria for personal development—as a tool for a job search. His idea is to use the Organizational Profile, the preface of the Criteria, to ground yourself in the organization to which you are applying for a job. The Organizational Profile is intended to be used to create an overview of an organization, from its environment and relationships to its competitive position, strategic context, and performance improvement system. By answering the questions contained in the Organization Profile, one can figure out the key factors that are of the greatest importance to the organization—what makes that potential employer tick. Says Nirody, "When researching a particular company that you have targeted as a possible future employer, the Baldrige Organization Profile provides an excellent framework to use. Research the company and look for answers to the questions in the profile! This will stand you in good stead." He explains, "First, it will help you develop a better understanding of the company; can clarify for you if you really want to work for that company; and can help you determine if you might be a good fit. Second it can provide you information that you can use in the interview process to show that you understand various aspects of the company, such as its challenges. And third, you can use the framework to help you formulate consequential questions, so that when the interviewer asks you for your questions you ask about critical-to-success items such as core competencies or strategic challenges, etc." What tips do you have for ways to use the Baldrige Framework and Criteria?

Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon There have been many studies and articles over the years about characteristics of successful CEO’s. I tried to summarize some of these characteristics, with a Baldrige spin, in 2013 with A Sense of Comity. Certainly, key characteristics include setting a vision, communicating and listening, and building trust. A topic that I have not seen discussed over the years is what executives value in their most senior leader. That topic has recently been explored in a survey of more than 1,750 executives in 19 markets worldwide and was summarized in an HBR blog by Leslie Gaines-Ross.  There were three characteristics that were valued most highly. I’ll start with numbers two and three. They are visibility and persuasiveness. 81% of global executives believed that their CEO’s had to have a visible public profile for their company to be highly regarded.  Furthermore, the CEO must convey the company’s story in a convincing manner in both traditional communication vehicles and in digital social media. The Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence started emphasizing this latter vehicle for CEO communication in 2013. The number one attribute that executives value in their CEO is humility. And only one out of four CEO’s in the study were described as humble by their executives. However, the study found that highly regarded CEO’s were six times as likely to be described as humble than their less highly regarded peers. Why is such value placed on humility? Because humble leaders are believed to demonstrate many of the other important leadership attributes: motivating and empowering employees, developing shared values, and listening well. They build a supportive organizational culture. These characteristics of humble CEO’s are supported by a recent article in the Financial Post (Canada). It quotes a study of 63 companies by Yi Amy Ou, an assistant professor at National University of Singapore’s business school. She reported that organizations led by humble CEO’s increased engagement and improved performance throughout the organization. Some additional data on the benefits of a humble CEO from the article: Ego is the culprit of over one-third of all failed business decisions. More than half of businesspeople estimate that egos cost firms between 6 and 15% of their revenues. According to Jim Collins, great leaders possess a rare combination of humility and perseverance. The Baldrige Quest for Excellence conference on April 12-15, 2015 provides an opportunity to hear from and interact with some role model CEO’s, including the four 2014 Baldrige award winners and Katherine Gottlieb from Southcentral Foundation, who will be recognized for her visionary leadership and will be delivering a keynote presentation. Whether you can join us or not, how is your organization doing on the "H" word?

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey Why the American Hospital Association (AHA) believes that using the Baldrige Health Care Criteria can help hospitals get better faster was explained recently in an audio podcast by Gene O’Dell, vice president for strategic planning and performance excellence for AHA. "From a hospital perspective, using the Baldrige model can help you achieve better patient satisfaction, clinical outcomes that are aligned with patient requirements, workforce satisfaction, . . . greater efficiencies and operational performance, and improved execution of your strategies," said O’Dell. AHA, which is a sponsor of the 2015-2016 Baldrige Excellence Framework (Health Care), sees the Baldrige sponsorship in alignment with its own performance excellence journey, Hospitals in Pursuit of Excellence Initiative, and strategic plan, including strategies to reduce cost and improve care and population health. As a framework sponsor, AHA provided a digital copy of the framework to all of its members and encourages its use for improvement. "Baldrige is the overall organizing framework that can identify where there are problems," said O’Dell. "Think of Baldrige like a map that will show the organization where . . . Six Sigma, Lean, and other tools should be deployed. . . . If an organization deploys [such tools] without an overall map as Baldrige, it would be like taking a trip in a car but not having a map to know the way." According to O’Dell, organizations—no matter their size or the type of services they offer—can use the Baldrige framework to answer three simple questions: Is your organization doing as well as it could? How do you know? What should your organization improve or change? "Baldrige helps you to integrate the organization to better align a patient’s requirements with the systems that will deliver what patients want and ensure those are linked to clinical outcomes," he said. "Baldrige helps focus you on the core values, giving you a systems perspective that is process dependent, not people dependent; visionary leadership, with leaders focused on the future and changing the business model not just running the business. But [the Baldrige framework] has a patient-focused excellence component, too, delivering ever-improving, high-quality health care to patients. And it also really values people. An engaged workforce that finds personal meaning and motivation in their work, and when they receive positive interpersonal and workplace support this really improves the entire organization." Added O’Dell, "When you speak with Baldrige Award winners, while they’re honored to have received the award, the real reward is how the process has improved and continues to improve their organizations. . . . Because, you see, pursuing performance improvement is not a destination, it’s but a journey, and more importantly you don’t have to apply for an award to get started in evaluating your organization and identifying areas for improvement."

Posted by Christine Schaefer Every year a new cohort of Baldrige Executive Fellows gains intensive knowledge about leading organizations to excellence through cross-sector, peer-to-peer learning hosted at the sites of Baldrige Award recipients. The following interview with Rand Jerris, Ph.D., highlights how a recent Baldrige Fellow applied learning from the leadership-development program to bolster the performance measurement practices of his own organization. Jerris is the senior managing director of public services for the United States Golf Association. 1. Tell us about your organization’s work and your leadership role. Created in 1894, the United States Golf Association (USGA) is the governing body for golf in the United States and Mexico. Together with The R&A in St. Andrews, Scotland, we write and interpret the Rules of Golf for golfers around the world, including rules of play, equipment standards, and a code of amateur status. The USGA also maintains a handicap and course rating system that makes the game fair and enjoyable for golfers of differing abilities. The association has also developed strategic goals of making golf more sustainable environmentally and economically, as well as making it more welcoming to a wider, more diverse population of participants and fans. Our most visible activities are our 14 national championships, including the U.S. Open, U.S. Women’s Open, and U.S. Senior Open Championships, as well as the recently announced U.S. Senior Women’s Open, which will launch in 2018. First contested in 1895, the U.S. Open is among the premier events in golf; it is also the economic engine that fuels our investment in the game, generating well over half of our $200 million in annual revenue. With such resources, we are able to support substantive programs that advance the game’s economic and environmental sustainability, as well as programs that make golf welcoming for all audiences. We’re proud to have invested more than $1 billion in the game over the past 12 years. In my role as senior managing director of public services, I oversee the association’s sustainability and community programs, as well as the USGA Museum (the oldest sports museum in the United States). USGA Museum and Arnold Palmer Center for Golf History at the USGA headquarters in Far Hills, NJ. Image used with permission; copyright USGA/John Mummert. I spend a majority of my time engaged in strategic and operational planning. For the past three years, I’ve led our efforts to improve organizational effectiveness and to create a culture of continuous improvement. While we’re unlikely to pursue a national Baldrige Award anytime soon, we have found that the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence provide an outstanding framework for elevating our performance. 2. Would you please describe your journey to date toward organizational improvement? Together with the members of our leadership team, I am thrilled with all that we have accomplished over the past three years. While we had existed for more than 116 years, we had never had a formal strategic plan until 2012 (substantively revised in 2014). Since starting our journey in 2012, we’ve also aligned our team behind a renewed mission statement. We’ve articulated our core values for the first time, with active participation by more than 200 members of our staff. We’ve identified, with clarity and purpose, our key customers and initiated key customer feedback mechanisms for all core programs. Last fall, we gathered every member of our staff from around the country for the first time and staged an all-staff retreat to build alignment around our strategic plan, our values (Lead, Serve, Inspire) and a new brand vision. We also conducted our first-ever employee engagement survey. It’s been quite a ride—and the results have been dramatic (and measurable!). Most recently, we created and introduced a scorecard of organizational measures for the first time. This has been a transformational process. When we started our journey three years ago with the help of Bo McBee (former chair of the Judges Panel of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award), it’s fair to say that the organization was focused on activities, rather than results. In those first days of working with Bo, we conducted interviews with departmental leaders across the USGA. A few of the questions focused on outcomes and measures (e.g., Are you having a good year? How do you know? What metrics do you use to evaluate your progress?). The response most frequently given went something like this: "We don’t have measures; we’re not a corporation." In our mission-driven culture focused on service to the game, the very notion of metrics and measurement was foreign. Yet we intuitively understood that any organization—for-profit or not-for-profit—could benefit from a clearly articulated set of measures that reflected our strategic priorities. 3. How did you identify the most relevant and reliable measures of your organization’s performance for the scorecard you’ve developed? The organizational scorecard that we developed is structured around the four core pillars of our strategic plan: Championships, Governance, Health of the Game, and Community. Our Championships pillar centers on the concept of inspiration—how can we elevate our championships to inspire present and future golfers, as well as golf fans around the world? The Governance pillar speaks to the integrity of the game and reflects one of our foundational purposes—to ensure that the game is fair for all who play, and that skill, not technology, determines success on the golf course. The Health of the Game pillar speaks to the sustainability of golf, in particular, to the economic and environmental viability of golf courses. Finally, our Community pillar guides our efforts to foster a game that is accessible and welcoming to all who wish to play. A fifth section of our scorecard speaks to the effectiveness of our operational activities ("support functions," in USGA parlance). In considering the metrics that would be most meaningful to our staff and most effective in capturing our desired outcomes, we found it helpful to think about various categories of measurements: metrics that speak to the reach of our programs; metrics that reflect customer satisfaction; metrics that capture engagement with our programs, and as such are reflections of the quality of our programs; metrics that reflect the effectiveness of our products and standards; and metrics that reflect the brand of our programs, which we view as essential to their sustainability. 4. What are some of the key indicators that you chose? Reach metrics are common within our Championships strategy; for example, these measure the size of the television audience for the U.S. Open (measured in gross ratings points) and the number of users engaged with the digital products that surround our championships (unique visitors to USOPEN.com, as well as the "Championships" tab of USGA.org). Customer satisfaction scores are also critical for our championships because we want to ensure that the best players in the world have the best experiences when they compete in a USGA championship—it’s essential to our efforts to attract the strongest fields. Finally, because significant percentages of annual revenue derive from ticket sales and corporate hospitality sales, we measure customer satisfaction for key spectator audiences at each of our championships. Engagement metrics speak to the adoption rates of our programs. Within our Governance strategy, for example, we need to know that golfers—from beginners to experts—are engaging with Rules education content. Another key initiative is the international growth of a single handicap and course rating system, so that a golfer from Australia can play a golfer from Austria and a golfer from Argentina and have a fair and fun match. For this to happen, the golf courses in each of these nations must have a course rating that is determined with a consistent and accurate formula. So we’ll measure the number of golf courses worldwide that have a formal USGA course rating. Among our engagement metrics, none may be more significant than measuring the percentage of golf courses that have reduced maintained and irrigated acreage. As we look out 25 to 50 years at the future of golf, the USGA believes that the most significant threat to the game is water—the cost of water, access to water, and the availability of water. In some regions of the country (southern California being the prime example), water issues are so extreme today that golf courses are being shuttered. Having studied the issue and the various mitigation strategies, we believe that there is one lever that has more impact than any other: reducing the amount of land we irrigate as an industry. To this end, we are elevating awareness of the issue aggressively, and we need to understand how individual golf facilities are responding. An illustrative example of an effectiveness measure can be found in the governance section of our scorecard: the average correlation coefficient of skill factors on the PGA Tour. As noted above, one of our fundamental responsibilities in setting and maintaining golf equipment performance standards—an important component of USGA Rules—is to ensure that technology never replaces skill as the primary determinant of success in the game. In other words, we don’t want you to be able to buy a better score. To this end, we invest more than $5 million annually through the work of the USGA Research and Test Center to test golf equipment for conformance to established standards (e.g., clubhead size and length; the coefficient of restitution for clubface materials; the size, weight, and initial velocity of golf balls; etc.). Mechanical golfer inside the USGA Research and Test Center at the USGA Headquarters. Image used with permission; copyright USGA/Matt Rainey. To confirm that these standards are effective and to understand if new materials or designs are providing unfair advantages, we measure the correlation between discrete skills (driving distance, driving accuracy, greens in regulation, average puts per hole, etc.) and overall performance on the PGA Tour—the world’s premier league and the stage on which the world’s most skilled players appear (measured by position of finish). Elevating this metric to the organizational scorecard ensures that we keep a close watch on this correlation. Finally, we have brand metrics, which speak to the relevancy of our organization and its programs. While we are recognized as the "governing body" for golf, the truth is that we hold no legal authority. Golfers choose to play by USGA Rules and choose to play with conforming equipment only because they respect the game and they respect the USGA. For us to be effective, we need to know that we are relevant to golfers—and we believe that the best measures of relevancy are brand metrics. 5. What was the hardest part of this undertaking, and what resources or learning were you able to leverage to overcome challenges? Of the many opportunities that we first identified to improve organizational performance, the one that we feared could cause the most disruption was the introduction of organizational measures. It was clear that some within the organization viewed the adoption of measures as another step toward the "corporatization" of the USGA in which we would progress from being a nonprofit organization driven solely by the good of the game to become a for-profit entity focused purely on the bottom line. There were also those who feared that the introduction of metrics would jeopardize individual job security. From such sentiments, we understood that cultural evolution—building an environment of trust across the organization—would be critical for the success of these efforts. The formal path toward creating an organizational scorecard began with a capstone project that I completed as a Baldrige Fellow in 2013-2014—an invaluable program enhanced by the involvement of Harry Hertz (Baldrige director emeritus) and Bob Fangmeyer (Baldrige director); the talented facilitation of Pat Hilton of the Baldrige staff; and the contributions of Bob L. Barnett as executive in residence. [Editor’s note: As a former member of the Baldrige Program’s Board of Overseers, Barnett played a key role in establishing the Baldrige Fellows program.] Through the Fellows program, I was first exposed to the power of organizational metrics. I would never have imagined that Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control (2012 Baldrige Award recipient in manufacturing) or Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital (2010 Baldrige Award recipient in health care) could have much relevance to the USGA, but exposure to their measurement-driven cultures opened my eyes to the power of metrics. The success of Lockheed Martin demonstrated clearly how metrics could be aligned from the organizational level to the individual level to drive both continuous improvement and results. From Advocate Good Samaritan, we learned that a system that advocates complete transparency around metrics to all key customers (patients, their families, their doctors, and all employees) can create a powerful alignment of customer satisfaction and employee engagement that, literally, saves lives. 6. After your organization’s senior leadership team approved a final set of measures for the scorecard, how was the tool introduced and rolled out to the workforce? To improve internal communications, foster greater alignment across the organization, and ultimately impact employee engagement, our executive director, Mike Davis, introduced a quarterly calendar of "town hall meetings" when he assumed his responsibilities in early 2011. We leverage these town halls to communicate important news about the organization, to solicit questions and feedback from the staff, and to advance initiatives for organizational improvement. One particular theme has been incorporated into every meeting for the past three years: our strategic plan. It is also our intention to elevate discussion of our core values at every town hall following their introduction last December. It was only appropriate, then, that the formal introduction of the scorecard occurred at our most recent town hall in mid-February (where we also discussed the results of our first employee engagement survey). A member of our staff (but not a member of our leadership team) introduced the scorecard, discussing its structure, demonstrating specific measures, and explaining its purpose for driving organizational improvement. At the end of the meeting, a hard copy of the scorecard, including 2014 baselines, was distributed to every member of the staff; the scorecard also has been posted to our employee intranet site. The first revision of the scorecard, incorporating data through February 28 (the close of our first quarter), was posted to the intranet on March 16. Naturally, the scorecard has also been shared with our board, which will use it to evaluate the annual performance of the leadership team moving forward. 7. How does your organization collect and report relevant results? As noted above, we initially thought that our greatest challenge might come from employee resistance to measurement. Thus far, this has not proven to be the case—the great majority of staff members are excited and eager to engage. Rather, the greatest challenge has proven to be the time and effort required to build a system that supports the aggregation and reporting of data on a regular basis. As a small (300 employees) nonprofit organization, we do not have a centralized technology platform (e.g., a customer relationship management database) that supports the centralization of data for our key activities. Our solution—perhaps temporary—is manual and simple: an extensive Excel spreadsheet that sits behind a single-page report. We realized quickly that the maintenance of the scorecard (and associated Excel spreadsheet) would require considerable effort. To support this work, we restructured the responsibilities of a member of our staff (manager level), and that person is now held accountable for working with individual department leaders or their team members who have been assigned ownership for reporting individual metrics. This latter point should not be taken lightly: We have come to understand that each metric needs to be assigned an owner, and that each owner has individual accountability for ensuring that the system or tool is in place to collect the necessary data and ensuring that the data is being reported. For example, one of our organizational priorities is to drive greater diversity and inclusion in golf. To this end, we are seeking to understand the penetration of our core programs to diverse audiences, in particular, women and persons of color. As we do so, we recognize that we need to start the actual collection of information on gender and ethnicity, so we realize that we need to introduce relevant questions into championship entry forms, volunteer and committee biographical forms, program registration forms and systems, etc. It’s one thing to say you are going to measure diversity and inclusion in core programs, but it’s a far more complicated process to ensure that the data are actually being collected, aggregated, reported—and, we hope, used to drive improvement. Finally, for the scorecard to be effective as we roll it out, there is also the need for baseline data. Once we had identified the relevant metrics, assigned ownership, and confirmed the processes for collecting and reporting data, we made an effort to identify relevant 2014 baselines. In some cases, this required staff members to revisit 2014 records and documents to reconstruct data, but the effort has proven worthwhile. In the end, the scorecard contains only five metrics for which a 2014 baseline could not be established, but more than 30 where baselines could be identified. 8. How do you see the scorecard evolving in the future? As work on the scorecard proceeded, one of the primary challenges was to build alignment across the leadership team as to the metrics that matter most. Based on my conversations with colleagues in other organizations and other industries who had embarked on similar efforts, I learned quickly that this was no cause for concern. Indeed, everyone I spoke to about the process assured me that selecting the best metrics is the hardest part of the project. But I also learned another important lesson that I shared over and over with my colleagues on our leadership team, that is, that it’s far more important to get started with good metrics than to wait to identify the perfect metrics. In fact, I learned that you cannot truly understand what the perfect metrics might be until you get started. The key is to identify measures that you think are appropriate and then be willing and open to refining once you start to use the results and understand how they are impacting the operation. In and of itself, the process of selecting metrics is a process that can and should be subject to continuous improvement. So as we move forward, I fully expect that continuous assessment and refinement of our metrics will occur. As we get underway, I also have my eye on identifying relevant external benchmarks. While it is one thing to have the ability to compare the performance of the U.S. Open against the Women’s Open, it would be another to be able to benchmark the U.S. Open against other elite tournaments in golf or, even better, against the very best championships in all sports. Unfortunately, the golf industry does not yet have a culture of transparency, so it is hard to find relevant industry data. But we’re committed not to let this prevent us from trying. One of our objectives for the near future is to initiate an industry-wide dialogue about improving the game and bringer greater value to golfers. And we’re going to suggest that the sharing of data across the industry might be a powerful way to drive change for our industry.

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey A shepherd is a person who tends, herds, feeds, or guards herds of sheep. Because sheep eat grass, clover, and other pasture plants, they can’t stay stagnate in one pasture for too long. The environment changes, and to maintain their health and productivity, the sheep must move from pasture to pasture; thus the importance of the shepherd-keep the flock intact, protect it from predators, and guide it to new horizons so that it can continue to grow. But does the shepherd lead the flock from the front or the back? Obviously, shepherds have been "leading from the back" for more than 5,000 years (talk about opportunities for cycles of improvement), in one of the oldest professions known to man. Shepherds guide the flock, allowing individuals or small groups to go here and there, testing new ground or new spots to feed, but all moving in the same direction. So, why am I writing about it here? Because in an upcoming Quest for Excellence® presentation, Kevin Unger, PhD, FACHE, president and CEO, Poudre Valley Hospital and Medical Center of the Rockies of University of Colorado Health (formerly Poudre Valley Health System), will be discussing senior leaders’ roles in decreasing costs and improving outcomes while leading from the back. According to Unger, there is great value for senior leaders to take a shepherding role-guiding their workforce, actively participating in improvement, and involving all senior leaders (including physicians) but giving the workforce opportunities to take initiative. For example, "Senior leaders create a focus on action through their active involvement in improvement team initiatives, but the involvement does not mean solving the problems for the teams," said Unger. He adds, no improvement methodology can be successful if it is not consistently applied-or supported by senior leadership, and front-line staff can problem-solve. "The visibility of senior leaders is necessary for engaging the workforce in performance improvements," he said. Senior leadership, including physician leadership, need to be engaged for successful improvements to take place. His presentation goal is to give audience members (and especially senior leaders) practical ideas on how to become more involved with improvement initiatives without undermining the work of improvement teams. Specifically, he will focus on what senior leaders can do to be actively engaged in both decreasing costs and improving clinical outcomes. Unger says that Poudre Valley Hospital and Medical Center of the Rockies learned from its Baldrige journey (it received the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 2008) the importance of continuous improvement. According to Unger, using the Baldrige Excellence Framework (1) assists in identifying areas where your organization can focus improvement initiatives, (2) provides a structured framework for making system improvements and creating focus, and (3) is a disciplined approach for identifying areas of strengths to build upon. To learn from this and other sessions featuring role-model Baldrige Award recipients sharing best practices, register for the Quest for Excellence, April 12-15, in Baltimore, MD.