Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey When Veterans Affairs (VA) Acting Assistant Secretary Bob Snyder presented trophies to the winners of the Robert W. Carey Performance Excellence award, he didn’t quite know what to expect. (The Carey award is a Baldrige-based program serving organizations within the VA; it is a member of the Alliance for Performance Excellence, which includes other state and sector Baldrige-based awards.) "My trips to Arizona and Tennessee have significantly altered my perspective on the Carey Program," Snyder said. "I did not realize how much this award means to staff and employees at those facilities." This quote really stayed with me. As a Baldrige Program staff member, I’ve also had the privilege of travelling to visit organizations in the running for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award or to talk with staff of organizations who are new to the Baldrige Criteria and just discovering the improvements in store for them. For the staff and employees of these organizations, by beginning a Baldrige improvement effort, there’s pride in that commitment to excellence, that commitment to patients and students, that commitment to missions, and that commitment to just getting better at whatever you do. Winning the Baldrige Award or a Baldrige-based award is simply more than just receiving an award; adopting the Baldrige Criteria means improvements for patients, students, and customers—as well as an engaged staff who really care about their work. Southern Arizona VA Health Care System in Tucson was one of the recent Carey award winners, and staff members celebrated their achievement with a Mariachi band and burrito breakfast. Mountain Home VA Medical Center was the other recent Carey winner, and winning meant so much more than just a new award on a shelf; said Mountain Home Director Charlene Ehret of her excited and engaged staff, ""I think they should be proud that we’re taking care of our nation’s heroes and that we’re providing them the best care anywhere." Similar pride in improvements and achievement can be seen across the military, where the Baldrige-based Army Communities of Excellence (ACOE) recently announced their award winners. According to the U.S. Army Installation Management Command, " The ACOE program is based on the principle that communities support people best by combining excellent services with excellent facilities in a quality environment. . . .  Soldiers who are convinced that their leaders care about them and their families perform their mission with more confidence." There are many, many more stories of engaged staff and happy customers, patients, and students honored by the Baldrige Program and the Baldrige-based programs across the Alliance for Performance Excellence. Check out the award winners in your state and nationally, and see just how much a commitment to improvements gleaned from adoption of the Baldrige Criteria means to them. Could your workforce find the same pride and engagement in your own Baldrige improvement initiatives?

Posted by Christine Schaefer Ready to assess your organization’s performance using an approach based on the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence? It’s easy to get started! Here are seven ways any organization (large, mid-size, and relatively small, and in business, nonprofit, health care, or education sectors alike) can begin a Baldrige-based self-assessment: 1.       Learn what your employees and senior leaders think. Distribute copies of the Are We Making Progress? and Are We Making Progress as Leaders? questionnaires, which are available as PDF files for free downloading from our Web site. Both surveys contain 40 questions organized by the seven categories of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence framework. Having your leadership team complete the latter survey and your workforce members complete the former—and then comparing the groups’ responses can help you check your progress on organizational goals and improve communication between senior leaders and workforce members. 2.       Identify gaps in your understanding of your organization and compare your organization with others using easyInsight: Take a First Step toward a Baldrige Self-Assessment. This assessment tool is based on the Organizational Profile. 3.    Complete the Organizational Profile, two sets of questions about your organization’s characteristics (environment and relationships) and strategic situation (competitive environment, strategic context, and performance improvement system). Have the members of your leadership team answer the questions. If you identify topics for which you have conflicting, little, or no information, you can use these topics for action planning. For many organizations, this approach serves as a first Baldrige self-assessment. As a bonus, since this profile consists of the first two items of the Criteria for Performance Excellence (known as P.1 and P.2), you’ll have begun a Baldrige Award application when you’re done! 4.       Use the full set of Criteria questions as a personal guide to everything that is important in leading your organization. You may discover blind spots that you have not considered or areas where you should place additional emphasis. 5.       Review the scoring guidelines (see pages 32-33 in the 2013-2014 Criteria for Performance Excellence booklet). They help you assess your organizational maturity, especially when used in conjunction with "Steps toward Mature Processes" (page 30) and "From Fighting Fires to Innovation: An Analogy for Learning" (page 29). 6.       Do a self-assessment of one Criteria category in which you know you need improvement. Answer the individual questions in the category yourself or with leadership team colleagues, referring to the item notes and the Category and Item Commentary (available as a PDF that may be downloaded for free from the Web site) to guide your thoughts. Then assess your strengths and opportunities for improvement, and develop action plans. Remember to build on your strengths as well as tackle your improvement opportunities. Be aware, though, that this kind of assessment does not reveal key linkages between your chosen category and the other Criteria items, and you may lose the systems perspective embodied in the seven integrated Criteria categories. 7.       Have your leadership team assess your organization. At a retreat, have your leadership team develop responses to the seven Criteria categories, and record the responses. Then assess your strengths and opportunities for improvement, and develop action plans. If you already have a copy of the 2013-2014 Criteria for Performance Excellence booklet, you’ll see these seven suggested approaches spelled out near the start (page v). By taking a Baldrige-based approach to self-assessment, your organization—no matter your sector or size—will be on the way to improvement and excellence. Related blog posts: "Baldrige Criteria: Seven Ways to Learn More" and "Baldrige Self-Assessment: Seven Steps for a Full Examination" (to come).

As summer winds down and many of us are helping our kids buckle down for another year of learning, why not consider jump starting or renewing your knowledge of Baldrige by attending one of our Baldrige Regional conferences in September?  It’s one of the seven ways to learn more about Baldrige cited by my colleague Christine Schaefer in her August 6th blog. Learning about the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence can help you and your organization improve in many ways.   If you are new to Baldrige, the Vice President for Learning and Organizational Effectiveness from 2010 Award winner Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital, Pattie Skriba, will present a preconference workshop the afternoon prior to the Chicago conference.  2010 Award recipient Freese and Nichols’ Chief Financial Officer, Cindy Milrany, will lead this three-hour workshop in Dallas.  These are both remarkable opportunities to be introduced to Baldrige by professionals who have been there throughout a Baldrige journey. And if you only have one day, we’ve planned a great one for you.  We will have twelve current and former Baldrige recipient organizations from all sectors of the U.S. economy sharing some of their best practices at both Chicago and Dallas.  These organizations have all used the Baldrige framework, improved their performance, innovated, and achieved world-class results. No other conference can offer so many Baldrige winners in one day!  Our format allows time for questions and networking with the recipients and other attendees- and who knows? Maybe you can form your own "study-group" moving forward. We even have a version of the traditional back-to-school sale, with discounts on conference registration and hotel accommodations. Register by August 21st for Chicago and by September 3rd for Dallas, and save on your registration fees.  If you are traveling to these hub cities, we have great conference rates at the Wyndham Lisle-Chicago Hotel and Executive Meeting Center until August 21st and at the Crowne Plaza Dallas Galleria-Addison through September 5th. We’ll be delighted to welcome you Back-to-Baldrige at one of these events!

In 2003, Stoner, Inc. from Quarryville, PA won the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in the small business category.  A leader in manufacturing of bulk release agents for plastics, lubricants, and electronics cleaning, more and more household consumers are becoming familiar with their Invisible Glass product available in many major chain stores. President Robert Ecklin, Jr. is the grandson of founder Paul Stoner and has led the company since the 1980s. During a recent visit to Watkins Glen International raceway for a Continental Tire Sport Car Challenge series race, I noticed Invisible Glass signs posted around the track and found a Stoner booth with products for immediate sale directly to race fans.  Staffing the booth was Stoner President Rob Ecklin, Jr. and two of his daughters.  Curious to learn the Baldrige "how" this came about, I requested an interview and Rob graciously accepted. Combining Racing and the Main Branding Effort Rob says it was a bit of a process; he started with hobby racing with Skip Barber [Driving School]; then began to figure out how to combine the main branding effort (the Invisible Glass product) with road racing.  In 2009 he met a gentleman who was building BMW race engines for Turner Motorsports and then had to decide which road racing series to join:  ALMS (American LeMans), Grand-Am, or World Challenge?  He got background on each series and picked Grand-Am because of the national television exposure, the Grand-Am series is financially stable, and the high percentage of female viewers which is the target market segment. Starting a race team involves acquiring and maintaining many different pieces:  the cars and all of their parts and replacement parts, trailers, pit crews, insurance, etc. so it seemed a better strategy to sponsor a team that already existed.  So Rob asked if there was a team that needed sponsorship, found Automatic Racing and a team was formed. Co-drivers Rob Ecklin, Jr. and Steve Phillips in front of their race car (credit: Wes Duenkel Motorsport Photography) You Want to Do What? Leadership and Communication As a leader, how did you communicate the auto racing initiative to employees (team members), the Board of Directors and stakeholders? Racing is not well-received in general except by those who understand racing, Rob explains.  Racing is about cars but really as much if not more about marketing.  He first proposed the idea to leadership Stoner then to team Stoner and it received mixed reviews.  Of course racing has its well-documented dangers.  Stoner has a succession plan should anything happen while he is racing but he does not want to implement it because of what some might term "frivolous" racing.  At first he didn’t plan to drive the race car but when the opportunity was presented this year at Daytona he went for it and is now a Continental Tire series driver. Racing at Laguna Seca Raceway (credit: Wes Duenkel Motorsport Photography) How do you balance running the company and running the race team, both of which have time, administrative, and travel obligations? It is difficult to keep the balance but if not managed properly the racing effort can lead to time management issues. There are always requests to do more; get a Twitter feed, do radio and newspaper interviews, have free ticket giveaways, and various other meetings and promotions in the race track’s local area before a race. What were the specifics around choosing the auto racing segment to directly market Stoner products? The goal is putting some energy around the brand vs. the competition.  Having an understanding and a passion for the brand has differentiated Stoner from others racing in the Continental Tire series.  Stoner was one of the first to do a national consumer product on the side of the car.   Sponsors on other cars do not have products that race fans would recognize as a product they could purchase. "The number one challenge is brand awareness; once people try Invisible Glass they return to purchase", Rob says. Marketing at the Track There is a phased plan for expansion of marketing products at the track.  Currently the two cars racing have the Invisible Glass name on them; next will be for one of the cars to promote the Invisible Glass with Rain Repellant which has a similar but slightly different color scheme. Of course nothing works as well for promotion as the car with your brand on it winning the race. With Rob’s team, their immediate goal is to achieve top ten, then aim for the best TV coverage which is when the car runs in the top five for much of the race. Putting cars on the track was first, Rob says, with selling product directly at the track second; eventually they will have a semi-trailer going from track to track selling branded clothing, hats and products. Stoner, Inc. products on display at the track (credit: Wes Duenkel Motorsport Photography) The other marketing piece is having branded billboards at the strategic points around the track as they had at Watkins Glen, as this will get your brand TV coverage no matter how your cars are doing during the race.  Rob says they are also considering sponsoring inside car cameras which ensures TV coverage and multiple sportscaster mentions, but each of these takes money so the budget has to be considered. Workforce (Race Team) Engagement Teamwork is obviously a key component in racing preparation and success; can you give examples? For engineering the race car setup, Rob defers to team owner Dave Russell. Rob is driver/sponsor so he is constantly working with engineer on car setup while at the track; working with pit crew on pit stops; and working with data acquisitions personnel to get lap times down. Each team member performance can lift the spirits of the rest of the team; for example, if the driver can deliver a competitive lap time it lifts the crew and if the car is turning well throughout the course it lifts the driver. While driving he will constantly be asked by the crew "What can we do to make the car faster?" Racing is about constant feedback and a constant cycle of improvement; each team member is involved with figuring out how to make the car better and boost the team’s performance. As an example of teamwork, Rob talks about when at Daytona this year he hit a tire wall and caused damage to the car. To repair it they needed parts they didn’t have so the team went up and down pit road and purchased parts from other teams, exhaustively worked on the car to get into the race, and ended up finishing 18th the next day. One of the Baldrige core values is management by fact. How do you measure the results of your marketing and racing efforts and determine if it is a success? While direct measures are difficult, there are some methods available. Rob can find out how many fans visited the booth and received samples by looking at the number of email addresses obtained. Rob receives Joyce Julius Reports that gives TV impressions (number of times your car / brand is shown) related into dollars. This indicates that for Stoner’s investment of X it is getting back in advertising dollars. Voice of the Customer You are obviously a "hands-on" executive, working the booth and driving the race car.  How do you take what you learn from these experiences and integrate it into decision-making in the organization? "It’s amazing what you can learn from meeting your customers", Rob says. By working at the booth, he can answer questions about the product and find out what they are thinking.   Because of this he always insists that booth staff to be knowledgeable about the products. The Fan Walk before a race is another way to meet customers and potential customers, as race fans have an opportunity to ask questions about the car, the drivers, or the sponsors. "The Baldrige discipline teaches you about process, checking and adjusting, systems, teamwork, measurements (you cannot hide the data), and what he learns at the track you can bring back in the workplace", Rob states. Blogrige readers, what are some new and innovative marketing methods you have developed using Baldrige?

 Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey A capstone is defined as a "crowning achievement, point, element, or event." But what does a capstone have to do with the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program? Capstone projects are completed by Baldrige Executive Fellows to improve their own organizations using learning and executive mentoring based on the Criteria for Performance Excellence. After a year of in-depth learning, face-to-face meetings with Baldrige Award recipient executives and their employees to see role-model performance in action, and peer-to-peer discussions with other senior leaders, each Fellow completes a capstone project to achieve an improvement or innovation of great impact to his or her own organization. The improvement or innovation should lead to strategic results with significant systemic impact in the organization. The Fellows even have access to an "executive-in-residence" who has led a Baldrige Award recipient organization and now lends his advice to program participants. They also have a sponsor within the organization to guide the "crowning achievement." Fellows’ capstone projects integrate Baldrige concepts and the best practices of Baldrige Award recipients learned through the program. In collaboration with his or her sponsor, the Fellow identifies and defines a problem or issue within his or her own organization, develops an approach that taps the learning and leadership skills gained from the Baldrige Executive Fellows Program, and produces actionable results. The capstone project is intended to fit the Fellows’ interests and leadership challenges along with their organizations’ distinctive needs, with measurable goals along the way. Because the capstone projects are strategically important to the organization, they remain proprietary, but here are some general examples: Technology: Your company is operating on two legacy software/hardware systems stemming from a previous merger. They are becoming difficult to maintain and are hampering full integration of the merged company. Your project is the development and smooth rollout of a new cloud-based system as a driver of the next stage of organizational integration. Customer engagement: In light of the increasing reliance on the use of social media to gather customer perceptions and interact with customers, your project is to redesign your company’s total customer engagement strategy. Other examples of potential capstone projects: To create and deploy a balanced scorecard to translate your mission, vision, and strategic plan into specific, quantifiable goals To use innovation and technology to drive improvements across a complex supply chain To create a more integrated knowledge management system to better understand customer segments and your effectiveness in serving them To implement a business-to-business enterprise strategy To implement a performance management control and information system What would your capstone project be if you were a Baldrige Executive Fellow?

by Jacqueline Calhoun In good writing, quotes help convey a message to the reader and emphasize the important points. Used effectively, quotes can even enlighten the author’s perspective on a topic. Some of the best thoughts and statements of our time have come packaged as a quote. Whether quotes are funny, serious, inspirational, or full of wisdom, they are meant to convey some special message. I will limit the use of quotes in this blog, but I need this to be an effective message. As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.—John F. Kennedy As I look back at the 25th Annual Quest for Excellence Conference®, actually, "thank you" does not seem to contain enough words to express the gratitude of the Baldrige Program for its sponsors. They made the conference successful for the Baldrige Program and community, and they made connections with organizations from all sectors of the economy who have or are interested in adopting the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence and in learning and improving. At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.    —Albert Schweitzer We are now getting ready to kick off the 2014 sponsorship program that will help to support the 26th Annual Quest for Excellence Conference, which will be held April 7-9, 2014, at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront Hotel in Baltimore, Maryland. For 2014, sponsorship packages also will help provide support for Baldrige examiner training and outreach.  Individuals or organizations can take advantage of sponsorship opportunities because they are designed to fit a complete range of budgets. Sponsorship packages offer many benefits, including prominent recognition and acknowledgement at the Quest conference; recognition on the Baldrige Web site; and, depending on the sponsorship level, exclusive post-attendee e-mail lists, complimentary Quest conference registrations, and the opportunity to send employees to a four-day Baldrige Examiner Experience Training. We want to thank our 2014 supporters in advance for their generosity. . . . We definitely cannot do it without you! No one who achieves success does so without acknowledging the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude. —Alfred North Whitehead The 2014 sponsorship program is underway. Please visit our Web site for the full details. We hope you become a sponsor!      

Posted by Christine Schaefer Let’s say your organization has already begun using a Baldrige-based approach to self-assessment. For example, your senior leaders have completed the Organizational Profile, reviewed the guidelines that make up the Scoring System of the Criteria for Performance Excellence, and developed responses to all seven Criteria categories. Your organization is probably ready now to conduct a full Baldrige self-assessment. Below are seven steps toward developing responses to the individual questions in all seven categories of the Criteria for Performance Excellence (Leadership; Strategic Planning; Customer Focus; Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management; Workforce Focus; Operations Focus; and Results): 1.       Identify the scope of the assessment: will it cover the entire organization, a subunit, a division, or a department? 2.      Select seven champions, one for each Criteria category, to lead a team in preparing responses to the questions in the category. Have the champions write your Organizational Profile. 3.      Form category teams. Have the members collect data and information to answer the questions in their respective categories, referring to the notes after each item and the Category and Item Commentary as guides. 4.      Have the teams share their answers to the Criteria questions and identify common themes and missing linkages. 5.      Have each category team create and communicate an action plan for improvement based on their answers. Consider using the Self-Analysis Worksheet, a Word file that may be downloaded for free from our Web site. 6.      Have the seven champions and other senior leaders build an overall action plan based on overall organizational priorities. 7.      Evaluate the self-assessment process, and identify possible improvements. Involve senior leaders, champions, and teams. The teams will need to collaborate to address questions that link the categories to each other. Organizations of any size and sector (business/nonprofit, health care, or education) can conduct a full Baldrige self-assessment in order to improve performance and achieve excellence. If you’re a manufacturer, service business, small business, or nonprofit organization (outside health care and education—that is, you don’t call your customers "patients" or "students"), you’ll use the Criteria for Performance Excellence booklet (see our Web site for ordering information). If your organization is in health care or education, you’ll use the Health Care Criteria for Performance Excellence or the Education Criteria for Performance Excellence booklets, respectively. Related blog posts: "Baldrige Criteria: Seven Ways to Learn More" and "Baldrige Self-Assessment: Seven Ways to Get Started"

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey The Baldrige Performance Excellence Program has always been proud to call the programs of the Alliance for Performance Excellence part of the Baldrige family. The programs that cover nearly every state in the union and include sector-specific areas base their work on the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. To follow the great work being done in the states and the national breadth and depth of Baldrige, check out the Baldrige Impacts, State by State. Here are some overall highlights of Baldrige in the United States: 590 organizations have applied for the Baldrige Award since 2005. 2010-2012 applicants represent 450,468 U.S. jobs, 2,213 work sites, more than $74 million in revenues/budgets, and about 417 million customers served. 478 national Baldrige examiners volunteered roughly $7.3 million in services in 2012. In 2012, more than 30 independently funded and managed regional, state, and local Baldrige-based award programs evaluated 288 organizations using 1,930 volunteer examiners. Organizations from all sectors and of all sizes use the Baldrige Criteria for improvement. The Baldrige Program and its Criteria are made in America, and the impacts of Baldrige can be found across the United States. Have you learned/shared/gotten involved with your state Baldrige-based program yet?

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey A recent article in The Washington Post-"Company Town’s Decline Reflects New Mantra: Shareholders First"-got me thinking. The article begins with a look at Endicott, NY, where, in the 1980s, 10,000 IBM workers kept the upstate town thriving. Today, after years of layoffs and jobs shipped overseas, about 700 employees are left. On the other hand, investors in IBM’s shares have seen increasing gains. Jia Lynn Yang writes, "It used to be a given that the interests of corporations and communities such as Endicott were closely aligned. But no more. Across the United States, as companies continue posting record profits, workers face high unemployment and stagnant wages." She goes on to say that a few decades ago, corporate America developed a belief that a company’s primary purpose is to maximize shareholder value. "Together with new competition overseas, the pressure to respond to the short-term demands of Wall Street has paved the way for an economy in which companies are increasingly disconnected from the state of the nation." In contrast, in 1963, IBM’s president and CEO, Thomas J. Watson, Jr., wrote that balancing profits between the well-being of employees and the nation’s interest is a necessary duty for companies. "We acknowledge our obligation as a business institution to help improve the quality of the society we are part of," wrote Watson in IBM’s corporate values. Obviously, the business world and global economy have changed since Watson’s time, and so has IBM stock performance, from a stock price of $17.16 in 1980 to $185.42 in 2013. So what’s the lesson here? As I was pondering that question, I was reminded of the less-than-desirable trend of fewer manufacturers applying for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, a competition that assesses much more than shareholder value. The award is based on how an organization answers the requirements in the Criteria for Performance Excellence, which measure product and process results, customer-focused results, workforce-focused results, leadership and governance results, and, finally, financial and market performance. The Criteria address shareholders in regards to ethical interactions, their corporate stewardship responsibilities, and corporate leadership’s required accountability to them. This article was in line with an answer I’ve heard and probably repeated regarding why more manufacturers may not be applying for the Baldrige Award; many such companies are more focused on short-term gains for shareholders than on the long-term investment in a management system that is designed for gains in all of the Criteria category 7 results. If corporations today are focused primarily on shareholder value alone (item 7.5 in the Criteria), do the other types of results even matter anymore? Given the recent financial crisis and the lack of a long-term focus in regards to sustainability, I strongly believe the answer is yes, and The Washington Post’s Steven Pearlstein recently agreed. In "How the Cult of Shareholder Value Wrecked American Business," he writes, "You could argue that much of what Americans perceive to be wrong with the economy these days—the slow growth and rising inequality; the recurring scandals; the wild swings from boom to bust; the inadequate investment in R&D, worker training and public goods—has its roots in this ideology." What do you think are the dangers of shareholder value being the primary measuring stick for a U.S. company?

Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon For those who have read my Blogrige posts in the past, I am glad to be back. I am enjoying my retirement, including the opportunity to continue supporting the Baldrige Program, while my colleague, Bob Fangmeyer, has the privilege of leading and guiding the program. But this blog post is not about leading the Baldrige Program or retirement, it is about the process of retiring. In hindsight, I wish retiring was a repeatable, "error-resistant" process. That is what I anticipated. But in reality, in government as elsewhere, it is a complex process, with multiple process hand-offs and many places for potential process failure. Let me give a few examples from my own experience. To start, I completed the necessary forms and then handed them in to a department that re-keys the information into an automated system. After re-keying, my address and salary were incorrect and an incorrect box was checked on the life insurance form. This caused some rework for the errors that were detected in the information I saw, but there were others that persisted. Some were detected  later in the process, requiring more time-consuming and expensive rework. Other errors? I don’t know yet. But I do know there were errors in other parts of the process, that had nothing to do with the forms. In subsequent processes other errors occured. Let me give a few additional examples.  A check for the full value of my Thrift Savings Plan [401(k)], administered for the government by a major financial institution, was sent to an incorrect address for my new plan trustee. And yes, it was a check in the mail not an electronic funds transfer. Because of various regulations/policies the money was "lost’ for over a month. My retirement savings, gone! I received my first net pension payment right on schedule and went to the payment website to see what the gross pay and deductions were, since this was an interim payment until my final pension is determined. The statement was already available on the web site for the next month, but there was none for the current month and the amounts did not agree. I sent a request for information and was informed it would take about thirty days for a reply. Let me quote from the eventual reply, "You may not be able to see this payment on line because this was an adjustment payment; however you should still be able to view it online." Huh? I use these examples (and there are quite a few more) because I know I am not unique, because I know my organization is not unique, and because the examples illustrate so many management system failures that great organizations using the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence avoid. Let me illustrate with just a few questions from the Criteria: How do you enable customers to seek information and support? How do you manage customer complaints? How do you…ensure the effective use of voice-of-the-customer and market data and information (including aggregated data on complaints) to build a more customer-focused culture and to support operational and strategic decision making? How do you make needed data and information available…to your workforce, suppliers…and customers? How do you design your…work processes to meet all key requirements? How does your day-to-day operation of work processes ensure that they meet key process requirements? I will not go further with Baldrige Criteria questions seeking the results you achieve, trends over time, or how you compare to other organizations. You get the idea I am communicating. In my mind, the considerations addressed in the questions above are obvious. Yet how many organizations and how many business processes do not address these basic questions? I am sure everyone has their own examples. So please recommend the Baldrige Criteria to your stakeholders. And maybe next year will be the year for process leaning and improvement!

Posted by Christine Schaefer We are always pleased to see how former Baldrige Award winners continue to blaze trails as exemplars of excellence. As a recent example, Premier Inc., the 2006 Baldrige Award-winning health care alliance, has earned national recognition as one of the "2013 Best Places to Work in Healthcare." In early August, Modern Healthcare named the service organization to its 2013 list of 100 companies or organizations in the health care field to be honored this coming October for demonstrating workforce-focused excellence. When Premier received the Baldrige Award, we highlighted its outstanding practices and results in relation to workforce focus, category 5 of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. As described in the 2006 profile (PDF) on our Web site, "Premier’s core value of focus on people embodies the company’s commitment to providing a safe, positive work environment and opportunities for development and career growth." The Baldrige Award winner’s focus on people includes several initiatives to foster employee development, including individual performance and development plans and an annual program for the development of high-potential employees. In addition, Premier offers many different employee-wellness initiatives focusing on health, fitness, and stress reduction. Premier’s ongoing culture and diversity program and the company’s annual Values Conference and volunteering activities also foster its focus on people.  Other honors for Premier this year include being named among the top 100 of the World’s Most Ethical Companies by the Ethisphere Institute, among top technology innovators by InformationWeek, and among the Healthiest Employers of Greater Charlotte by the Charlotte Business Journal. Kudos to Premier’s leadership and every workforce member for continuing to make your organization a great place to work!

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey "Some of the best ideas for improving health care come from outside our field," writes Dr. Peter Pronovost in his blog, "What Health Care Can Learn From Corn Milling." "A recent experience reminded me of the value of seeking ideas and inspiration from elsewhere. . . . I was among 15 executives from various fields who toured Cargill through a fellowship run by the [Baldrige Performance Excellence Program]. On a visit to Cargill Corn Milling, among the largest of the gigantic company’s 75 business units, I heard a story with unexpected parallels to health care." The fellowship for which he is referring is the Baldrige Executive Fellows Program, now in its third year and receiving rave reviews. Through visits to Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipients and in-depth meetings with other senior leaders, the Fellows embark on a one-year, nationally ranked leadership development experience that is designed to provide a safe, peer-learning environment to inspire them and help them hone their leadership skills. Through the category 1 leadership lens of the Criteria for Performance Excellence, the Fellows look at their own organizational challenges to determine what innovations can be brought home. In his blog, Dr. Pronovost describes the story of how Cargill Corn Milling reorganized its nine plants by what they provided to customers in order to eliminate inefficient self-competition that didn’t meet customers’ needs. "As I listened to the presentation, my pulse quickened. I leaned forward anxiously feeling as if I took a double espresso to pull an all-night study session. The parallels between corn milling and health care were haunting," Dr. Pronovost writes. "Change ‘plant’ to ‘hospital’ and you have the same situation as the Cargill officials described. Hospitals that are part of the same corporate or nonprofit system compete with one another in such fields as neurosurgery, orthopedic surgery, cancer care and cardiac care." In "Company Churns out Burritos, French Toast — and Inspiration for Health Care," Dr. Pronovost writes of more lessons learned as a Baldrige Fellow while touring the plant at Cargill Kitchen Solutions, talking to employees and reflecting on their customer focus, their humility, and the intense accountability on results-all lessons that can be applied to other industries. In the first three years of the program, Baldrige Fellows have also had the pleasure-and discovered new insights-from touring the Ritz-Carlton (where they went on a back-of-the-house tour showcasing The Ritz Mystique), Premier, Sharp Healthcare, and Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital, among other Baldrige Award recipients. They’ve also met with Sister Mary Jean Ryan, former chair and CEO, SSM Health Care; Steven Sessions, director, Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control Supplier Quality; Rulon Stacey, president and CEO, University of Colorado Health; Paul Worstell, past president, PRO-TEC Coating Company; E. David Spong, retired president, Boeing Aerospace Support for Integrated Defense; Horst Schulze, president and CEO, Capella Hotel Group; Rose Almon-Martin, vice president of performance excellence, MEDRAD; and Steve Begnan, vice president, human resources, Nestle-Purina, Inc., among many other Baldrige Award-winning senior executives. The best way to wrap up this blog? Perhaps it’s to show you the learnings noted from some of the other Baldrige Fellows themselves. Note: Applications are now being accepted for the next cohort of Baldrige Executive Fellows. Please visit the Web site for more information.  

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey For twenty five years, the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program has been associated primarily with the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, but Baldrige is so much more than just an award. Many organizations are simply not ready now or may have no interest ever in applying for a Baldrige Award. They embrace an improvement mindset but want to focus on one aspect of their business or one product line or one work system or one challenge, etc. They don’t want to embark on a long improvement journey; they want to realize an improvement now. These organizations might be interested in using the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence for incremental or even small improvements that would make a big difference for their customers and other stakeholders. And that’s one of the beauties of the Criteria-it’s divided into categories, which are divided into items. Those items have basic requirements, overall requirements, and areas to address with multiple requirements. Whether the organization has just started improvement strategies or is well along its performance excellence path, it can focus on a high-level (basic requirement) or in-depth (multiple requirement) area of the Criteria that fits how or what it hopes to improve-without embarking on a long improvement journey. That said, enter the Baldrige Collaborative Assessment, a Baldrige service introduced last year, to help an organization accelerate the improvement of its key processes or customized to focus on a specific organizational priority. A Baldrige examiner team, working directly, face-to-face with the organization’s staff members, identifies the organizations strengths and opportunities for improvement using the Criteria-at the level where the organization would like to focus. The assessment has no connection to the Baldrige Award, which eliminates any competitiveness or tension when the examiner team comes to visit. Organizational key themes are developed collaboratively that represent the the critical few findings-both key strengths to be leveraged and opportunities for improvement that, if acted on, could have significant impact on organizational performance. Key themes and detailed recommendations are discussed in real-time during a presentation while the examiner team is still on-site. A follow-up feedback report contains more information on the recommendations, presented by Baldrige Criteria category, that the organization’s staff members found to be most important to address.  The follow-up feedback report also contains those recommendations that the organization staff members felt were valuable to act on but would have less impact and could wait until some future time for action. Finally, in the feedback report are references to award application summaries from recent Baldrige national award recipients who have excelled in particular Criteria items. These references are not intended to prescribe or even suggest practices that would work for the organization; rather, they are intended to spark ideas. And that’s the whole point of the Baldrige Collaborative Assessment. There is no application or intense focus on an improvement journey that the organization may not desire at the current time. There is simply a desire to improve and to work collaboratively with trained Baldrige experts on what you hope to improve. No journey required.

Posted by Christine Schaefer How is the Baldrige framework for performance excellence helping manufacturing companies today? Consider the experience of Seagate Technology, a manufacturer that defines itself as a "world leader in hard disk drives and storage solutions." The company, which employs 55,000 workers at sites around the world, reported revenue of $14.4 billion in the fiscal year that ended in June 2013. I recently interviewed Dave Brucks, a Baldrige Executive Fellow who is the executive director of Seagate’s Functional Excellence program. As shared below, he described his company’s use of Baldrige resources in recent years to broadly improve the company’s performance. What drew you to participate in the Baldrige Executive Fellows Program and how might your company benefit? I learned of the Baldrige Executive Fellows program through the Performance Excellence Network, the regional Baldrige program here in Minnesota. I have been reaching out to other organizations to learn how they started their "performance excellence journey," so the Fellows program is a great opportunity to interact with senior leaders of other organizations and learn from them. At the QE [Quest for Excellence®] conference, being in the Fellows program was like having a VIP backstage pass to the [best-practice-sharing] event. The site visits to award-winning organizations are what really attracted me to the program. We had been studying award-winning applications to learn about best practices prior to my involvement in the Fellows program. A site visit, however, really brings the application to life for me. Seagate will benefit from bringing some of the best practices and processes from high-performing organizations and applying them to the work at Seagate. We’ve used some of the best practices already, for example, in how we manage customer complaints. I was able to pen characteristics of good customer complaint processes from [Baldrige Award-winning] hospitals, restaurants, and other manufacturers. We created spreadsheets of Baldrige Award winners’ practices; and improvement teams throughout the organization use this information  in their areas. This has been a very valuable resource for people [within the organization] who know nothing about Baldrige. What are some of your key learnings so far about the Baldrige framework and/or organizations that have used this framework? Have your perceptions changed as you are learning more about Baldrige as a Fellow? The fascinating thing for me is how the Criteria can be applied in so many different types of organizations to help them improve. Seagate first started to look into using the Baldrige Criteria about 18 months ago. As I learned more about the Criteria, I got more and more excited about its potential for helping Seagate improve in all areas of our business. As we do site visits with the Fellows program, it becomes obvious that these award-winning organizations use the Baldrige Criteria every day in how they run their businesses. They don’t have "people doing Baldrige" or spend time doing Baldrige separate from running their business. Baldrige core values, concepts, and the Criteria for Performance Excellence framework are integrated into their business model and demonstrated on a daily basis by their people. Tell us about the Baldrige-based program you are setting up at Seagate. The [Functional Excellence] program we are setting up at Seagate moves us beyond a compliance model to a performance excellence model. Seagate has been ISO-certified for 15+ years. This has given the company a really good quality management system foundation to build on. We want to move beyond these requirements, and the Baldrige Criteria provides a great framework to raise expectations in all areas of our business. Two of Seagate’s locations were selected as pilot sites to develop the Functional Excellence process before it was expanded to other Seagate locations worldwide. A five-step process has been defined for Seagate sites and organizations to follow. The development of an Organizational Profile has been a great starting point for the process. It has helped to align the leadership on what is important to the organization (vision, mission, customers, strategic advantages/challenges, competitive position, etc.) and has them quickly thinking about areas of improvement. We have used a Baldrige survey as an assessment tool at two of our sites. This has helped focus them on highest-priority improvement opportunity areas and get them quickly moving on improvement action plans. Another Seagate pilot site took the narrative approach to assessment as we are trying to build in flexibility to the process to make it work for all of our sites worldwide. Based on my learning from the Fellows program, we have aspirations to put a model in place similar to those of organizations such as Cargill and Tata. Both of these organizations have really strong internal assessment processes based on the Baldrige Criteria. Our journey to get to this type of process has just started!     What do you see as the key challenges for companies that are new to the Baldrige Criteria, and how do you think these might be overcome? One of the key challenges is how to get started. The good news is there are many resources available through the state, regional, and national programs that help. Everyone I have contacted at an award-winning organization has been extremely helpful in answering the many questions I have on the process. Another key is to get people involved as evaluators/examiners to learn the assessment process and Criteria. When we started using Baldrige at Seagate, some people had the perception that it was a lot of paperwork—a lot of administrative work—not resources that focus us on getting better. Another key challenge for Seagate is integrating the Functional Excellence effort into other company initiatives. Seagate already has a knowledge base on business excellence tools such as Six Sigma, Design for Six Sigma, Lean, and 8D problem solving. It is a challenge to show members of the organization how these all work together and that Functional Excellence doesn’t replace these but, rather, is a way to tie these all together in a systems view. The Criteria framework pulls [other performance improvement tools and efforts] all together. When we did our ISO audit, people viewed it only as a quality system check. But the Baldrige framework is more comprehensive and includes all aspects of the business, including HR and finance. Hearing the stories of award-winning organizations [as a Baldrige Fellow] is wonderful; yet, at the same time, it’s somewhat intimidating when you hear how long most of them have been using the Criteria. Showing how an organization can identify some quick wins and make significant changes quickly using the Criteria as its basis can help build momentum for organizations just starting their journey. We’ve made a lot of progress in one short year—it doesn’t take 10 or 15 years to make progress; we made significant progress in just one year in talking about our Organizational Profile. What do you see as the key benefits of the Baldrige Criteria? One of the biggest benefits that I have observed at Seagate is that it has broadened the scope of organizations that we look at to benchmark and learn from. Being a high-tech manufacturing company in an industry where there are only three main competitors, Seagate has a tendency to only look at our competitors in order to benchmark processes against them. The common language that the Baldrige framework provides allows Seagate to learn from health care, education, nonprofit organizations, and small businesses, too. Assessments with the Baldrige Criteria also do a nice job of highlighting the issues that the senior leaders of the organization need to focus on to have successful customer relationships. Compliance audits focused on a lot of basics that need to be attended to but infrequently captured findings that related to issues that were on the minds of senior leaders. I can see how using the framework really helps to "align the arrows." The Criteria facilitates developing a common understanding of goals, processes, and results in the organization and having people align their work and energy toward doing these in the best way possible. Other thoughts about use of Baldrige in manufacturing today? As I did research on the Baldrige Program at the start of Seagate’s effort, I was surprised to see that there were not a lot of manufacturing or high-tech organizations using the Criteria. I  hope that Seagate’s involvement and sharing of our journey will inspire other high-tech and manufacturing organizations to use Baldrige as their performance excellence model. A lot of people don’t yet know it’s more than an award. We look at it as a tool that we use, along with other tools, for continuous improvement. For more on the value of the Baldrige Criteria in manufacturing, see "Saving Manufacturing Jobs: A Systems Perspective (aka the Baldrige Approach" and "Manufacturing Excellence: Guess What These Companies Have in Common?" For information on the second annual Manufacturing Day, an initiative of NIST’s Manufacturing Extension Program that encompasses factory tours and other events across the country on October 4 to promote manufacturing in America, see http://www.mfgday.com/.   

Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon Last week we had our third meeting of the 2013 cohort of Baldrige Executive Fellows. I always find the interactions at these meetings to be extremely stimulating and I look forward to the next interaction as soon as the meeting ends. The Fellows learn from executives at Baldrige Award recipients and from each other; a tremendous learning opportunity for them and for all of us privileged to work with the Fellows. Last week’s meeting was hosted by Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital (Good Sam), a 2010 Health Care category recipient. I want to share with you a simple, but powerful, message Pattie Skriba, Good Sam’s VP for Learning and Organizational Effectiveness, shared — their six key steps to organizational transformation (or as they refer to it going from good to great): Establish an inspiring vision. Enroll leaders in the vision and create ownership. Create alignment and transparency to support the vision. Deploy evidence-based practices. Establish a systematic leadership process. Build loyal relationships with stakeholders. I was struck by two things as I looked at the list. The first is how logical this list is in concept and yet how hard it is to put into practice. The second thing that struck me is the  overlap with Baldrige core values and concepts: visionary leadership, customer-driven excellence, valuing workforce members and partners, focus on the future, management by fact, and systems perspective. While the "Baldrige six" don’t have a one-for-one match with the "Good Sam six," in aggregate they sure do form a twelve-pack of powerful messages to any senior leadership team looking at organizational transformation. So here’s my list of six things to do with this blog if you want to get better faster: Share it with your senior leadership team. Challenge them to act on it. Determine how you will measure progress. Deploy, align, and show commitment. Communicate, communicate, communicate. Don’t give up! Your organization will be better for accepting your suggestion. Thanks and let me know how it goes.

Posted by Christine Schaefer In a recent article published by Manufacturing Business Technology, Dr. Luis Calingo, a veteran Baldrige examiner and current president of Woodbury University, spoke of the great benefits of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence to the manufacturing sector today. In a follow-up interview, he offered the following additional insights. The title of the Manufacturing Business Technology article suggests that the Baldrige Criteria can provide a more valuable management tool than ISO 14000 for manufacturers. Would you please explain the comparative benefits? Thank you for this question as the statement in the Manufacturing Business Technology article did not fully capture my sentiments. The popularity of the ISO family of standards has accelerated whenever customers make certification to such standards a requirement for their suppliers, which has indeed been the case. While the ISO standards are mandatory customer requirements, the Baldrige framework is a voluntary roadmap to organizational excellence. When business leaders hear "Baldrige," they think that adopting [the Criteria] will require a lot of work and that they will need to hire consultants on how to use the Criteria. This reminds me of what a guru has written about the nature of work: Work is expending effort on things we don’t want to do. Passion is expending energy on things we love to do. The goal is to do no work.  Baldrige is about the pursuit of excellence, and isn’t that the goal of every CEO? If CEOs really understand Baldrige, they will see it as a natural part of what they would love to do anyway. Manufacturers are continually bombarded with tools and certification systems (such as ISO 9000 for quality management systems, ISO 14000 for environmental management systems, OSHAS 18000 for workforce health and safety, SA 8000 for social accountability, ISO 27000 for information security management systems); to a large extent, those have gained in popularity because they are customer requirements, that is, requirements of customers for their suppliers. All of these certification schemes may be useful in areas where they address specific opportunities for improvement. The Baldrige framework, on the other hand, focuses on the entire organization as a system of purpose, processes, and outcomes. My suggestion to manufacturers is to pursue those certifications under the umbrella of performance excellence [using the Baldrige framework] so as to avoid the dangers of sub-optimization. Operationally, what that means is that a business should first conduct a Baldrige-based self-assessment—not necessarily the full-blown application for the Baldrige Award or state-level award, but rather, questionnaire-based assessments such as Are We Making Progress? so that they can identify their opportunities for improvement (OFIs) first, and based on those, then determine which certification schemes will be most useful, for example, for OFIs in quality management, ISO 9000; if health and safety issues are present, OSHAS 18000; and so forth. You have spoken of the perception among some business leaders today that the Baldrige Award may be rooted in outdated concepts. How would you recommend that those who are familiar with the evolution of the Baldrige Program and the iterative nature of the Criteria for Performance Excellence speak to this point? There is, indeed, the perception that the Baldrige Award may be rooted in outdated concepts like Total Quality Management, although I am quite certain that business executives would agree that quality is important. As an educator myself, I’ve seen how management thought has evolved through the centuries, producing enduring concepts. For example, the earliest known reference to product quality dates back to the Code of Hammurabi (1772 B.C.): "The mason who builds a house which falls down and kills the inmate shall be put to death." I believe that the root cause of this perception problem is that, culturally, Americans tend to have a shorter time orientation or attention span. One way to overcome this is to have more schools, particularly business schools, teach Baldrige concepts as part of their curricula. Dr. Luis Calingo I have done volunteer work in other countries such as the Philippines and Thailand helping them build their Baldrige-based national quality award programs, and there is no shortage of manufacturers applying for their quality awards. Their governments have been able to link their award programs to their national action agenda for improving productivity and competitiveness. It is very important for businesses to see that the Baldrige program is part of a larger program to create more jobs and increase the quality of life of all Americans. Tell us more about how you believe the Baldrige Award helps build accountability of businesses to their customers and employees through performance measurement. At the risk of oversimplification, first and foremost, the Baldrige Criteria require that senior leaders listen to their customers and formulate a strategy that addresses, among others, the needs and expectations of their customers. Second, the Baldrige Criteria require that that organizational strategy is translated into processes, that there is a sufficient, capable, and engaged workforce and a plan to flawlessly execute those processes, and that there is a performance measurement system that enables the leadership to track their collective success in achieving intended outcomes. In short, the Baldrige Criteria encompass a total system of accountability that is applicable to a wide range of organizations. In fact, we’re using Baldrige in my university without calling it that—maybe when we’ve got all our processes lined up and results to show, we’ll apply for the California Awards for Performance Excellence and, eventually, the Baldrige Award. At risk of sounding prescriptive, I recommend that all manufacturers have a balanced scorecard, which translates their visions of their future into goals and eventually strategic initiatives and action plans. The scorecard provides a foundation that enables senior leaders to adopt the Baldrige Criteria as a roadmap for sustainable performance excellence and, at the same time, guiding them to the appropriate tools and certification schemes (such as the ISO standards) that will help them address their opportunities for improvement.  

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey What’s in an organizational award? It might be motivation for your employees. It might be proof to your customers that you care about excellence. It might be a signal to your suppliers that you expect only the best. It might help you in pursuing complementary credentials (such as accreditation or ISO certification, depending on your sector) or be the next step after Magnet recognition. It might help you prove your own qualifications to a parent organization, accreditor, or other contracting body. "We hope receiving this award demonstrates to [our customers] just how much we care about our organization and theirs," said Terry May, president of MESA, upon receiving the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. "We know now that we wouldn’t be the organization we are today without [Baldrige]. You helped us become a world-class organization, and for that we thank you." There are lots of awards out there: best this, most that. The application criteria might be specific to one industry like human resources or information technology or might be something for which the organization can be nominated. But the nation’s highest and only Presidential award for organizational excellence remains the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. The Criteria for Performance Excellence, which are the application for the Baldrige Award, are complex but truly robust and filled with value. Applying for the Baldrige Award is not just a competition to prove your excellence but to help you improve in general; some organizations never apply for the award but find great value in using the Criteria to improve. James Berry, president of Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, said, "Baldrige sustains and maintains a succession of learning; a model to stay out front of constant change. . . . The Baldrige process has revelations in it. If you’ve been in a  business for a long time, another set of eyes [Baldrige examiner assessment] can literally shock you by pointing out what you’ve missed." "It’s not easy to win [the Baldrige Award], but it’s not about the award. It’s about the growth, the continuous improvement, the journey—no small task but it’s worth it," added Bruce Kintz, president of Concordia Publishing House. What about your organization? Is it ready to (Im)Prove?

Posted by Christine Schaefer Recognizing excellence is a critical component of the mission of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program. That is what the Baldrige Award is all about! Today I’m writing to remind organizations advancing on their journey toward excellence of an additional form of national recognition now offered through the annual Baldrige Award process: Category Best Practices. All organizations selected by the Panel of Judges this coming November for such recognition will have received a site visit as part of the 2013 Baldrige Award process and will have demonstrated outstanding practices in one or more of the first six categories of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. Through last year’s national award process, the following three organizations were selected and honored for outstanding practices in two Criteria categories each (as shown below): Maury Regional Medical Center, Columbia, TN: Strategic Planning, Workforce Focus Northwest Vista College, San Antonio, TX: Leadership, Customer Focus PricewaterhouseCoopers Public Sector Practice, McLean, VA: Leadership, Workforce Focus The Baldrige Program introduced category-level recognition in 2012 to encourage organizations to continue on their journey to excellence. The intent was also to ensure that useful best practices of award finalists (site-visited organizations) would not be missed by other organizations on the journey. The three organizations honored in 2012 each shared practices in their recognized categories at a panel session of the 25th Annual Quest for Excellence conference. Are you considering whether to apply for a Baldrige Award in the future? Or is your organization in early stages of an improvement journey and looking for inspiration from those that may be farther along on the road to excellence? If so, keep in mind that the Baldrige Award process now offers this additional means of celebrating and sharing excellence.    

I am an introvert; INTJ for those who admire Myers-Briggs indicators. I remember being particularly pleased a few years ago when I read an HBR article that extolled the virtues of introverts as effective leaders. The article stated conventional wisdom and a decade of academic research concluded that extroverts make the best leaders. However, the article continued with an experiment with college students folding T-shirts. Groups with proactive followers and an introverted leader folded on average 28% more T-shirts. That made me feel good! Very recently, a blog posting in the Business Management Daily talked about Donald Keough, the former president of Coca-Cola. He, like many senior executives, made clear-cut decisions, even if he sometimes was too snappy in his judgments. In 1989, soon after the Berlin Wall came down, he was approached by his head of German operations with a proposal to build a $500 million bottling facility in the former East Germany. Keough decided on the spot that the investment was too high and cut the head of German operations presentation off.  Subsequently, Keough was informed that the head of German operations wanted to resign; he felt slighted by Keough because his proposal did not receive fair evaluation. Duly chastised, Keough agreed to visit East Germany and reconsider the proposal. Subsequently, he decided to invest $1 billion in East Germany and eastern Europe. It ended up with huge profits for Coca-Cola. And Keough learned to listen to his management team more effectively. Keough had learned a key component of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence requirements for effective senior leadership: frank, two-way communication. Closely related to this communication is participation in the development of future organizational leaders, which requires open communication. The Baldrige Criteria strategic planning category asks about your process for identifying potential blind spots and strategic opportunities. Keough was fortunate that his being chastised led to the implementation of a significant strategic opportunity. But was this the best process for getting there? To see what else role model senior leaders should consider, see item 1.1 on senior leadership in the Baldrige Criteria. How do your senior leaders or you as a senior leader measure up?

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey  If you are reading this, then you must care about continuous improvement, performance excellence, and of course quality. If this is true, than please join us in celebrating that passion for quality-and learn from some case studies, research, and tools, too. ASQ is sponsoring world quality month by providing a platform for acknowledging the efforts and accomplishments of quality and all who work to make it happen. The Web site serves as the hub of the celebration and will be continuously updated through December. Anyone can submit quality event details (conferences or smaller, internal events), success stories (print/video), and knowledge resources (case studies, research, quality tools, etc.) and participate in polls and social media discussions. And, if I may suggest, what a great place to share your success with implementing or using the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence as a framework to achieve quality outcomes. Here are a few things that you can do: Participate in the #QualityLasts contest on Twitter. The prize is a Canon PowerShot SX260 HS 12.1 MP CMOS digital camera. Visit the World Quality Month Web site and share your story. Submit internal and/or external events celebrating quality in the months of October or November to worldqualitymonth.org. Also, submit knowledge resources—case studies, best practices, quality tools, success stories, videos, etc.

Posted by Christine Schaefer Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein and others have written about the problem of an excessive and short-sighted focus by many business leaders today on stock values for shareholders. But what about the role of corporate governance boards? Aren’t members of a board of directors obliged to take a longer-term view of company management and performance results? Aren’t they expected to help ensure their organization’s future sustainability, in part by creating and balancing value for all customers and stakeholders? As governance board members of Baldrige Award-winning organizations have affirmed, those boards that embrace the role of ensuring responsible governance and leadership of their organizations are likely to find the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence an essential tool in this endeavor, regardless of the sector or size of the organization. The "Governance and Societal Responsibilities" section of the Criteria (item 1.2) provides a board of directors with self-assessment questions divided into three topic areas: organizational governance, legal and ethical behavior, and societal responsibilities and support of key communities. The first area addresses how the organization achieves accountability for  management actions, fiscal accountability, transparency in operations, independence and effectiveness of audits, protection of stakeholder and stockholder interests, and succession planning for senior leaders. The next questions (also Criteria requirements) guide the board of directors to determine whether it has  an effective approach to leadership performance evaluation and improvement, legal and ethical behavior, fulfillment of responsibilties, and support to key communities. For example, the Criteria ask how the organization considers societal well-being and benefit in its strategy and daily operations—including its contributions to the environmental, social, and economic systems in which the organization resides and from which it benefits. To help boards of directors get started using the Criteria for Performance Excellence, the Baldrige Program has long offered a free resource: A Baldrige Perspective for the Board of Directors (downloadable PDF). Following are ten sample questions (spanning all seven categories of the Criteria for Performance Excellence) that can help a board of directors begin to assess the performance of the organization and target areas for improvement:  How does your organization address risks and anticipate public concerns with its products and operations? (Category 1, Leadership) How does your organization promote and ensure ethical behavior in everything it does? (Category 1, Leadership) How does your organization ensure that its strategic planning addresses long-term sustainability, major shifts in markets or the regulatory environment, and its unique strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats? (Category 2, Strategic Planning) What does your organization do to gain new customers and to build relationships with existing ones; specifically, what does your organization do to increase its customers’ loyalty and encourage them to return? (Category 3, Customer Focus) Is there an effective process in place to review organizational performance and, based on the findings, to prioritize improvements and designate areas for innovations? (Category 4, Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management) Does your organization have a process for career progression for members of your workforce, as well as a succession plan for leadership and management positions; are they effective? (Category 5, Workforce Focus) Does your organization have a systematic approach for designing its processes to meet key requirements (e.g., new technology, cycle time, productivity, and cost control); are there measures (including in-process measures) and a systematic approach for managing and improving these processes? (Category 6, Operations Focus) Does your organization have a process in place to ensure that operations continue if there is an emergency (e.g., a weather-related, local, or national emergency)? (Category 6, Operations Focus) What are your organization’s results for measures of product and process performance that are important to your customers, and how do they compare with the results of competitors or similar organizations? (Category 7, Results) What are your organization’s results for measures of financial and marketplace performance, and how do they compare with the results of competitors or similar organizations? (Category 7, Results) Can your board members and/or your organization’s senior leaders answer these questions? If not, your organization may have gaps requiring your attention. Check out related posts on Blogrige on how to prepare to conduct a Baldrige self-assessment: "Baldrige Self-Assessment: Seven Ways to Get Started" and "Baldrige Self-Assessment: Seven Steps for a Full Examination." And if you serve on the board of directors of a business or nonprofit organization—whether a corporate governance board, a professional association advisory board, or a school board—please continue to share with us how you have used the Baldrige framework to guide the organization to improve its performance and excel.

By Dawn Marie Bailey In the 2013-2014 Criteria for Performance Excellence, innovation is defined as making meaning­ful, discontinuous change to products, processes, or organizational effectiveness in order to create new value for stakeholders. So you might not expect to find an example of such innovation in a traditional industry such as nameplates, where two-time Baldrige-Award-winning Texas Nameplate has been making nameplates that have basically looked the same for almost 70 years. But Dale Crownover, the president/CEO of the family-owned business started by his father, is a self-described "Baldrige practitioner"; innovation and visionary leadership were concepts he knew well. Texas Nameplate has just been awarded a U.S. government patent (#8540285) for a chemically etched QR code for nameplates. The QR code can be scanned by any smart phone and links the customer to the Internet where he/she can find detailed information about the product. The code allows repair crews to instantly access repair manuals while in the field, companies to more efficiently track inventory, users to instantly access safety information, and customers to understand their product with more clarity (no more user errors trying to understand the limited information that can be printed on nameplates). Nameplates can be found on just about every appliance from refrigerators, hot water heaters, air conditioners, and lawn mowers, to big pressure vessels used in the oil and gas industry, and valves and machinery used by the military, to many other uses in many other industries. "If it wasn’t for Baldrige, I would have never thought about [developing the process recognized in the patent]," Crownover says. "Everything that we’ve ever done, we’ve always tried to think of more innovative ways and how to bring more value for our customers’ customers. Baldrige taught me that. . . . Baldrige taught me that no matter what you do, you can do it better. I have a lot of respect for the Criteria and more importantly how it provides visionary considerations for all stakeholders in finding bigger, better ways to do things." In 2007, the Department of Defense requested that the unique identification codes on its products be laser etched into nameplates in order for the product information to be read by scanners. The problem was that the typical etching process is chemically based so that it can be done in batches; laser etching can only be done one at a time-not a very cost-effective method, especially for a small business like Texas Nameplate. Crownover says he had always been bothered that no matter how much Texas Nameplate improved its processes, the resulting product was just about always the same; he said you really can’t tell the difference between a nameplate made by his father 60 years ago and a nameplate made today. So the idea of creating a code on the nameplates that could be scanned was novel and a little risky (who would have thought that someday we would all be walking around with built-in scanners in our smart phones). But Crownover says he thought back to the Baldrige Criteria with their definitions of innovation, visionary leadership, and a focus on the future, and he made a decision that the small business would try to perfect a chemically based process for creating codes that could be read by scanners.  After some research and development and trial and error, it worked; Texas Nameplate applied and was awarded the patent so that it now can create a Digital Nameplate.® Now, if a customer has a question about an appliance, for example, with a Digital Nameplate®, he/she can scan the QR code and instantly tell a technician over the phone the model, type, date bought, brand, specifications, etc. According to the Criteria, innovation results from a supportive environ­ment, a process for identifying strategic opportunities, and the pursuit of those strategic opportunities that you identify as intelligent risks. Achieving innovation requires resource support and the tolerance of failure. Identifying strategic opportunities and intelligent risks is part of strategy, and pursuing the intelligent risks must be embedded in manag­ing organizational operations. Crownover says there was an intelligent risk with this new technology, but the "very engaged workforce" at Texas Nameplate worked as a team in the best interest of the company and of the country. The largest part of the challenge, he said, is that customers have not typically seen nameplates on their products as adding value. "Customers don’t buy nameplates because they think they look cool," Crownover says, "but some government official told them to do it. They see [nameplates] as an expense; we see them as an investment. . . . These nameplates provide value because a product with a QR code can be scanned for safety measures, liability, inventory, ISO standards, and even to prevent counterfeiting (you’d be amazed how many valves are counterfeited overseas). It’s going to provide more access to keep up with the product." To meet this challenge, Crownover says the company is now talking as much with the marketing people among its customers as with the engineers; the marketing folks have tended to be more creative in terms of innovative technology. "It took five years to win the Baldrige Award and five years to get this patent," Crownover says. "Both took a lot of work, a lot of patience, but between the two of them if somebody was to ask which was more satisfying, I couldn’t tell you. . . . Both were well worth it, and we’re excited. This might take off; it might not, but it doesn’t really matter. . . . Getting the patent was like winning the Baldrige Award. It validated that what we were doing was successful." "I get mad at anybody who says [he/she] wants to do Baldrige to win," added Crownover. "[Texas Nameplate follows the Baldrige Criteria] to improve processes. This patent was not really to be egotistical, to say we have a patent, but to revolutionize our industry." What innovation or intelligent risk would you pursue to revolutionize your industry?

Posted by Christine Schaefer If you’re a Baldrige examiner or possess similar expertise, you’re probably used to performing well on assessments. Test your knowledge now of five facts about the national Baldrige Award and program. Data on the whole show that Baldrige Award winners have created more jobs than similar organizations in their industries. True or false? An economic evaluation of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program, released in December 2011, determined that program benefits outweigh overall costs by a ratio of ____ to 1. A 2011 report determined that Baldrige Award-winning or site-visited hospitals outperformed other top U.S. hospitals on nearly every metric used to determine the industry’s prestigious ______________________ recognition. Applicants selected to receive the Baldrige Award ultimately receive about _________hours of scrutiny from Baldrige examiners and judges. U.S. subunits of foreign companies can apply for the Baldrige Award. True or false? Here are the correct answers: 1. True: For more information, see this Blogrige post, which also points out that "an analysis of data from two-time Baldrige Award winners shows that the median growth in number of sites was 67%, median growth in revenue was 94%, and median growth in jobs was 63%.The median growth in jobs was nearly 20 times greater than matched industries and time periods, according to Data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which indicated a comparative average job growth of 3.2%." 2. 820: The findings on the high benefit-to-cost ratio of the Baldrige Program echoed conclusions of a 2001 study, which was also conducted independently of the program by university economists. Significantly, both studies were undertaken when the Baldrige Program still received federal funding; with public-sector funds considered as costs, the 2011 report nonetheless concluded, The benefit-to-cost ratio of 820-to-1—using only the benefits for the surveyed group of applicants for the National Quality Award since 2006 but using all of the social costs of the Baldrige Program—certainly supports the belief that the Baldrige Program creates great value for the U.S. economy. The Baldrige Performance Excellence Program, with the imprimatur of national leadership and a prominent national award presented by the President, creates great value that could not be replicated by private sector actions alone. You can access the full report from this link on the Baldrige Web site. 3. Thomson Reuters National 100 Top Hospitals: What’s more, a 2012 report by Truven Health Analytics (formerly known as Thomson Reuter’s health care business) affirmed for the second time in two years the value of Baldrige practices by top-performing U.S. hospitals; you can access the report from this link to the Baldrige Web site. 4. 1,000: If your organization is interested in applying for the 2014 award process, please note that updated Baldrige Award Application Forms and guidance will be posted on the Web site by the end of this month. 5. True: And here’s some good news on expanded award eligibility: beginning in 2014, large organizations with multiple subunits interested in applying for the award will no longer be subject to a limit on the number that can do so during the same year. Whether or not you received a perfect score on this trivia quiz, with the answers and links provided above, you’re now equipped with additional facts for making a strong case to use the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence and apply for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. We hope you share these facts with leaders of any organizations that you wish to see excelling long into the future.

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey At a recent Boston University-hosted event, leading health care professionals pitched innovative ideas on how to solve the nation’s most pressing problems on a tight budget. Eight teams had two minutes each to describe their innovation projects and their importance, as well as the project’s funding cost, choosing from just $12,500, $7,500, or $2,500. Like the singing competition show American Idol, participants at the event texted in their votes of support. The teams who won received the following prizes: $12,500 prize to build an online network for health care professionals to exchange solutions to complex medical problems $7,500 to introduce e-cigarettes to wean the homeless off tobacco $2,500 to recreate a program that addresses patients’ basic resource needs as a quality care standard Among the health systems participating was Baldrige Award recipient Henry Ford Health System. Managing for innovation is a core value in the Baldrige Health Care Criteria for Performance Excellence and its importance cannot be overestimated (even if you are given just two minutes to propose an innovation!). According to the Criteria, "innovation means making meaningful change to improve your organization’s health care services, programs, processes, operations, health care delivery model, and business model, with the purpose of creating new value for stakeholders. Innovation should lead your organization to new dimensions of performance." The Criteria contain even more learning about innovation that can be part of strategic thinking at any organization in any sector. For example, when thinking about innovation, consider Does your organization have a supportive environment for innovation that can be further supported by a performance improvement system? Does your organization have a process for identifying strategic opportunities? Does your organization have an environment and learning culture that support the pursuit of intelligent risks? Does your organization have the ability to rapidly disseminate and capitalize on organizational knowledge to drive innovation? Given these considerations, if you had two minutes and a tight budget, what innovative idea would you pitch for your organization?