Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon I am frequently asked about the elements of a Baldrige assessment, whether conducted as a self-assessment or externally conducted. The topic came up again during a discussion I was part of last week. In particular, what is the relationship among the various components of a Baldrige assessment. Here is my simple explanation for the three major components: The Organizational Profile (Category P in the Baldrige Criteria): This section is about what’s important to you. You describe your organization and its operating environment, key relationships, competitive environment, and strategic context. The Baldrige Criteria (Categories 1-7) responses: This section is about how you are accomplishing what’s important to you. In a systematic fashion starting with leadership and ending with results, you describe how your organization does what’s important to you for successful enterprise management and sustainability. The Scoring Guidelines: This section allows you to assess how well you are accomplishing what’s important to you. The scoring guidelines allow you to assess the maturity of your processes and their deployment, and the breadth and significance of the results you are achieving. We always speak of a systems approach to organizational performance management. The full system is a combination of all three pieces. Without all three it would be neither holistic nor a system. The most common incomplete use of the system is ignoring the Scoring Guidelines. They are the dimension that complements the seven categories of the Criteria. The Scoring Guidelines allow you to evaluate how mature your approaches are, how well you deploy them, how systematically you evaluate and improve them, and how successfully you align them with what’s important to you. For results, the Scoring Guidelines help you evaluate your current performance, your performance changes over time, how well your results compare with other organizations, and how successfully they address what’s important to you. Sustainability requires knowing what you are doing (the criteria), how well you are doing it (the scoring guidelines), and how relevant it is to your needs (the organizational profile). Organizations frequently and appropriately start with just the organizational profile, because you need to know who you are before you can add more detail. In a recent Blogrige interview with Lisa Muller from Jenks Public Schools, she describes the value of the organizational profile. But once you know who you are, assessment requires the how (criteria responses) and the how well (scoring)!

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey What does snoring have to do with the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence? The connection has to do with the popular graphic (below) in the Baldrige Criteria depicting steps toward mature processes. The graphic shows the first step as simply reacting to problems. Operations are characterized by activities rather than processes, and they are largely responsive to immediate needs or problems. Goals are poorly defined. Snoring is caused when your breathing is partially obstructed during sleep. Due to swelled or excess throat tissues and/or nasal or other blockages, your throat can relax enough to partially block your airway and vibrate. If your airway becomes blocked and narrowed, the airflow becomes more forceful, causing tissue vibration to increase and sending the airflow in all directions. Baldrige examiner Dr. Safwan Badr, professor of medicine at the Wayne State University School of Medicine, has pointed out that the friction and turbulence during snoring are often depicted by those who study or treat sleep disorders as arrows going in multiple directions. Urologists also use a similar image to depict disorders for which they’re familiar. The friction and turbulence lead to a high effort to breathe but little airflow. In the case of the Baldrige Criteria, the arrows graphic simultaneously might depict efforts (or projects or workforce members or activities) that are all going in different directions, without any kind of a system, without alignment, and without integration. There might be friction and turbulence when activities (or people) are at cross-purposes, and there could certainly be high effort but little accomplished. Such a graphic could depict other examples of high effort and little results-whether the depiction is of disrupted air flow from an engine or a hole-covered pipe with water flowing in all directions but very little flowing through to the desired result. This graphic simply represents a lot of ineffective work, with no direction or focus. Organizations facing such challenges often turn to the Baldrige Criteria. One goal of the Criteria is to help organizations move from simply reacting to problems, to early systematic approaches, to aligned approaches, to integrated approaches. Imagine how this graphic might depict the operations in your organization. Now imagine how effective your approaches could be with the Criteria as a guide?

Posted by Christine Schaefer With annual training for Baldrige examiners ending this week, the kickoff of the 2014 Baldrige Award process draws nearer. I always find the annual cycle of evaluation, anticipation, and celebration exciting. And the pomp and circumstance of the official Baldrige Award ceremony is not necessarily the apex of jubilation for organizations that receive the nation’s highest award for performance excellence. Consider, for example, the following two stories of celebratory moments for last year’s Baldrige Award winners. The setting of the first story was a hotel ballroom, site of a health care symposium attended by some 1,000 managers of Sutter Health. The northern California health care system encompasses dozens of clinics and 25 hospitals, including Sutter Davis Hospital. An incoming text message interrupted the regional CEO as he was speaking on stage at the gathering. The message informed him that Sutter Davis Hospital had been selected as a 2013 Baldrige Award winner. "He stopped his presentation and made the announcement," recalled Baldrige examiner David Rasmusson, a master black belt with Sutter Health who recently described the scene during a break at Baldrige training. "Instantly, the Sutter Davis Hospital personnel at the symposium jumped out of their seats and shrieked with joy, and a standing ovation followed immediately after that." The second story of celebration took place in a classroom of young schoolchildren in the Pewaukee (Wisconsin) School District. Superintendent JoAnn Sternke was visiting the students soon after the delivery of the district’s 2013 Baldrige Award crystal. In a way that’s bound to resonate with parents of young children, the kids made merry with the bubble wrap that had been protecting the prestigious crystal. Sternke soon joined them in a gleeful scene that involved stomping on the packaging of the national prize for organizational excellence. (Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop …) Beyond the thrill of such moments, these scenes in my mind depict the variety of organizations that have successfully used the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence to improve and excel. Cheers for all of those in business, health care, education, and nonprofit sectors that are now on a journey to excellence. The Baldrige Program is here to help you reach the point where hundreds of applauding adults stand up to fete your organization’s great accomplishment and/or euphoric kids pop plastic bubbles with their feet.   

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey The night before U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker presented the 2013 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards, she received an award of her own. The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) presented her with the 2014 Harry S. Truman Award for making "skills and workforce development a priority to ensure that businesses have the skilled workers they need in order to grow." Community colleges of course play a vital role in training these workers for "the jobs of today and tomorrow," per a press release. "Every day, [community colleges] help Americans find paths to good jobs—jobs that allow them to provide for their families . . . while also strengthening the local and national economy. Each of you understands that for America to compete in the 21st century, it is all of our responsibility to ensure an educated, flexible, and dynamic workforce," said Secretary Pritzker upon receiving the award. "I believe that we can do a better job of helping BOTH America’s workforce AND America’s businesses if—and only if—we build stronger partnerships across ALL stakeholder groups at the local, regional, and national levels. And I believe that community colleges are central to building the dynamic ecosystems of training that American workers need to compete in the years ahead." Graduates of Baldrige Award recipient Richland College Dr. Kathryn K. Eggleston, president of Richland College, a 2005 Baldrige Award recipient in education, underscores the essential role that the nation’s community colleges, enrolling 12.7 million students annually, serve in preparing a dynamic workforce. "Working in partnership with businesses and other stakeholder groups, community colleges are crucial to bridging the skills gap between America’s workforce and America’s businesses in order for the U.S. to restore a vital middle class and enhance our global competitiveness." At the time it received the Baldrige Award, Richland College had achieved the following results: The employment rate for students taking technical training or workforce development classes reached nearly 100%. The number of students completing the core curriculum in preparation for transfer to four-year institutions grew from 500 in 2002 to 1,660 in 2005. For classes scheduled, class-time convenience, variety of courses, and intellectual growth—measures students rated as the most important—student satisfaction surpassed the Noel Levitz national norm over four years. The college found innovative ways to keep tuition rates low and quality high when state funding dropped from 70% to 30% over three legislative sessions. According to a U.S. Department of Commerce blog, 3.9 million unfilled jobs in the United States, in fields such as health care, manufacturing, and engineering, require post-secondary training and specific skills needed for high-tech jobs—skills that many unemployed workers do not have. "Every day, community colleges provide 13 million students across the country with the education they need to be competitive in today’s economy. These two-year institutions continue to improve the quality and relevance of the education that their students receive." The Harry S. Truman Award is given to someone outside the field of education who has had a major, positive impact on community colleges. It is named for President Truman who commissioned a study on higher education in 1947 where the term "community college" was first used widely. The idea of community colleges appealed to the President, and his administration began to put in place mechanisms to foster the growth of such institutions around the country.

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey In the wake of General Motor’s (GM’s) recall of  millions of vehicles that have been linked to as many as 13 deaths, Industry Week ran an article on what relatively new CEO Mary Barra should do in facing this "career-defining problem." Quoting business consultant David Wilmer, tips on crisis management are offered: Maintain a balanced view on reality, be optimistic, and take action. Don’t deny the problem; your employees and probably customers and stakeholders already know about it. Don’t dabble in trial and error; seek outside advice. Make fact-based decisions (don’t trust instinct alone). Seek help to overcome your personal blind spots. Maintain an emotional investment in the organization, so that employees are inspired to engage as well. Avoid blame; be in control of the situation. Don’t ask employees to endure hardships that leaders are not enduring. Reading these tips reminded me of Winston Churchill’s quote—"Never let a good crisis go to waste"—a quote I heard a few years ago when the Baldrige Program was compelled to move forward with a business plan that focused more on cost-recovery/revenue generation than on government funding. Certainly, any crisis forces an organization to regroup, refocus, reach out, and possibly even reinvent. These tips also caused me to pull out the leadership category (category 1) of the 2013-2014 Criteria for Performance Excellence to see how they tracked with the requirements for effective leadership. At the basic level, the Criteria leadership category asks How do your senior leaders lead? Requirements for this question are associated with the vision and values promotion of legal and ethical behavior the creation of a sustainable organization communication, and a focus on action How do you govern and fulfill your societal responsibilities? Requirements for this question are associated with the governance system performance evaluation legal behavior, regulatory behavior, and accreditation ethical behavior societal well-being, and community support From my reading of these requirements, the Criteria lay out a road-map of considerations for not only leading through a crisis but leading from day to day. Certainly, every Criteria requirement might bring some thoughtful reflection to Mary Barra—or any other leader. Which Criteria requirement, concept, or core value would you highlight for Mary Barra’s reflection if you were an adviser for GM?

Posted by Christine Schaefer The community of the Baldrige Award-winning Pewaukee School District (located 21 miles outside Milwaukee, Wisconsin) dates to the 19th century. In that era, a pioneering settler from Vermont named Asa Clark taught school in his house. A middle school in Pewaukee is now named in his honor. Today the suburban school system has an enrollment of roughly 2,800 students. This population is educated within four school facilities that are co-located on one large campus. The buildings include two elementary-grade schools (one for those in prekindergarten through grade 3, the other for grades 4 through 6), a middle school (grades 7 and 8), and a high school (grades 9 through 12). Photo from Pewaukee School District; used with permission. The unique campus setting provides advantages for district operations, teachers, students, and parents alike, according to Larry Dux, five-term member and current clerk of the Pewaukee school board. "It really helps us create sense of community," said Dux. The single campus also enables the different schools to use the facility’s physical resources efficiently, share teachers, enable older student volunteers to help out in the lower schools, and make student drop-offs convenient for parents, he said. The apparent cohesiveness of the school system may also benefit its robust volunteer program. This past year, the district tracked 31,000 volunteer hours in its schools, according to Wendy Wong, public information officer of the Pewaukee School District. The district recruits community volunteers to tutor elementary students in reading and math, and some classrooms have asked that every student be assigned a volunteer, she said. Being a relatively small school district apparently has not hindered Pewaukee in using the Baldrige Education Criteria for Performance Excellence to develop continuously improving, systematic approaches to ensuring a strong focus on its customers. According to Randy Daul, principal of Asa Clark Middle School, the district’s three areas of focus in engaging its customers are electronic communication, business and community partnership, and the volunteer program. Communication and community engagement together constitute one of five strands of the district’s strategic plan, and Daul said that a theme in recent strategic planning activities is to improve communication and engagement opportunities. To this end, the district regularly collects and reviews input from stakeholders and best practices of other organizations. In response to voice-of-the-customer information gathered via surveys, the district has used technology to greatly expand key customers’ access to information in recent years. For example, according to Daul, all types of information previously requested by parents and students in surveys are now made available to them at their fingertips. As the district has made comprehensive information accessible electronically to parents and students, Daul added, creating "a one-stop shop for them as customers is the goal." One result of such access, he said, is that parent-teacher communication is no longer based mainly in parent-teacher conferences at school as parents can access anytime all the needed information they have identified. Incidentally, when asked about referring to students as customers (as the Baldrige Education Criteria do, for example, in category 3, "Customer Focus"), Daul and Dux suggested that the term customer need not pose a problem in education and instead can help a district in serving students. What’s key is "moving from a teacher focus to a focus on the learner," said Daul. "You get buy-in and synergy once you have that focus on the learner." Of the broader context of the term customer in the education sector, Larry Dux added, "A customer is someone who needs something from you." It’s important for teachers to listen to students, he said. "It’s about student-centric achievement."

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey A recent blog aimed at Federal government employees really caught my interest. "A Government Program That Has Withstood the Test of Time" written by Timothy J. Clark highlights how the Baldrige Criteria can be used within U.S. government agencies—with the push for their use coming not necessarily from "the top" but from American citizens themselves. "In the United States, the government’s role in society continues to expand at the same time budgets are being reduced through sequestration," writes Clark. "And citizens debate the role of government but yet expect that their tax dollars be used as effectively and efficiently as possible. So, why not try a new and proven approach to assess and improve the government’s organizational performance?" Clark lists some of the ways that the Baldrige Criteria could be used to support government agencies: To conduct an annual assessment that government agencies are efficiently and effectively utilizing all assigned resources, as required by the Federal Managers Financial Integrity Act (FMFIA) To ensure effective financial management systems (i.e., write the Statement of Assurance [SoA]) that meet the objectives of FMFIA To meet the Government Accountability Office (GAO) requirement for conducting an entity (organizational)-level assessment To gain insight on whether the agency’s own implementation strategies are resulting in real improvements (through Criteria assessments) "The Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence may be among the closest things we have in the United States to a common language and proven methodology for assessing and improving organizational performance within and across industries," writes Clark. "I would like to think the U.S. Founding Fathers would have embraced the Baldrige concept as a method for helping to ensure that the political system they built would be continually improved in pursuit of their aim for a more perfect union." Clark adds, "Application of the Baldrige criteria separates the leaders from the managers," defining effective leaders as those who Continually improve performance Accept the risks associated with implementing a method that embraces more accountability as well as transparency Introduce a higher standard of organizational performance To add to this case for U.S. government use, we know that nearly 100 international programs use the Baldrige Criteria in their entirety, translated, benchmarked, or adapted as their performance excellence models. Many of these countries also tie their performance excellence models directly to their governments in terms of recognition, funding, education, and certification. Some examples that have been recently highlighted in Blogrige are Singapore and Thailand, New Zealand, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, and many others. The Baldrige Program also works closely with the Global Excellence Model (GEM) Council that consists of organizations recognized globally as the guardians of premier excellence models and award programs in their geographic regions; GEM includes the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) and the Japan Quality Award, among other members. Do you think the case has been made for U.S. government agencies to learn more about how the Baldrige Criteria can lead to more effective and efficient operations? If not, how would you make the case?

What does health care in the United States need? Well, according to a report released May 29 by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), U.S. health care organizations need "systems engineering." In their letter to President Obama, PCAST Co-Chairs John Holdren and Eric Lander state that "systems engineering, widely used in manufacturing and aviation, is an interdisciplinary approach to analyze, design, manage, and measure a complex system in order to improve its efficiency, reliability, productivity, quality, and safety." In other words, health care organizations, including hospitals and community-based providers, need to manage their operations as an integrated whole rather than as a set of discrete components. They need to design, implement, measure, analyze, and manage their operations as one system if they want to simultaneously improve their operations, finances, and patient outcomes.  Holdren and Lander go on to say, "[Systems engineering] has often produced dramatically positive results in the small number of health-care organizations that have incorporated it into their processes. But in spite of excellent examples, systems methods and tools are not yet used on a widespread basis in U.S. health care." To increase the use of systems methods and tools, they recommend that "Health and Human Services and the Department of Commerce build on the Baldrige awards to recognize health-care providers successfully applying system engineering approaches." They note that the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award provides the opportunity to raise awareness of performance excellence in U.S. health care. It is gratifying that the Council recognizes the unique role that the Baldrige Award has been playing in health care. The Baldrige Criteria, in fact, provide exactly the holistic, systems approach to excellence that the PCAST report recommends. Seventeen health care organizations have received the Baldrige Award since 1999. And these role-model organizations manage to simultaneously provide outstanding patient, operational, and financial outcomes. What may be surprising to a health care or other organization leader not familiar with the Baldrige Program is that we are more than "just" a Presidential award; in fact, Baldrige is an educational program with an award component, not the other way around. Thousands of organizations use the Baldrige criteria as their integrated performance management framework without ever applying for the award.  Health care organizations are experiencing a true sea change in expectations from their stakeholders, including the payors, patients, and workforce they depend on for their survival and financial well-being. We wholeheartedly agree with the Council that a systems approach can help any health care organization adapt and thrive despite these rapidly changing demands. The national payoff when more organizations heed the Council’s call and systematically work toward performance excellence will be healthier citizens and communities, and a healthier economy. To learn more about how Baldrige can help your organization improve leadership skills learn from role model organizations run an effective and efficient organization self-assess your organization apply for the Baldrige Award and receive detailed feedback on your organizational performance participate in a collaborative assessment of your organization’s strengths and opportunities call our customer service line at 301-975-2036 or visit our website at http://www.nist.gov/baldrige/.

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey In 1974, University of Texas machinist Lee Brumit saw an opportunity to start his own company for precision manufacturing, so he borrowed $1,100 to buy a used machine to make parts out of his garage. That was before the advent of total quality management in the 1980s, the off-shoring of many U.S. manufacturers in the 1990s, and the "telecom tech-wreck" of the early 2000s. Forty years later, the company he founded, KARLEE remains a privately owned, family business, with his wife as the CEO and their two sons serving in leadership positions. The company now comprises 250,000 square feet of manufacturing in three locations with over 400 team members and multiple other support businesses located in Texas. "We are thankful for the many growth opportunities that have allowed us to create jobs, give back to our community, and make a positive difference in the lives of others," said CEO Jo Ann Brumit. "It is an honor to share this exciting celebration with the many team members, customers, suppliers, and community supporters who have made our success possible. We look forward to the next 40 years as we transition into a second-generation company."  KARLEE CEOJo Ann Brumit I asked Jo Ann Brumit about the secret to the company’s sustainability and about her take on the significance of U.S. manufacturing. Significance of the 40th Anniversary  We need to share "success stories about manufacturing thriving in the U.S., which is really important to the overall viability and security of our country," Brumit said. "What makes this fortieth anniversary so significant is that KARLEE, a midsize U.S. manufacturer, has survived the off-shoring of manufacturing, the great recession of 2008, in addition to the challenges of running a small business. . . . To me, that makes forty years of sustainability significant." The Team Brumit gives all of the credit to people: the KARLEE team (of which two team members are celebrating over 30 years in the company and more than 25 have over 20 years). She said leaders role model the company’s values through behaviors by showing love, respect, trust, and integrity. "It’s really all about the people and wanting to make a difference," Brumit said, "and I think that’s the sustainability piece. . . . If you want your community of people to be better, then it’s about doing the right thing.  If you care about your people, they will care about the customers and that leads to the bottom line; I think that’s the secret to 40 years of sustainability." As far as making a difference for the community, KARLEE’s team members take that seriously, including supporting a clinic for the medically under- and uninsured; donating time, talent, and funding to community churches, food banks, blood drives, and other charities; and even adopting families at a local elementary school. KARLEE’s team members can also donate to a fund for colleagues in need, for example, colleagues who need help with bills during an illness or a plane ticket for the death of an out-of-state family member. Brumit said KARLEE’s team member annual survey consistently reflects a rating of 95% for being a great place to work. Challenges Faced and Overcome KARLEE survived the "telecom tech-wreck" in 2002, right after receiving the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 2000. During the "’telecom tech-wreck’ . . . everything without any warning just failed," Brumit said. KARLEE went from a $112 million company to a $18 million company in about a year and a half (read the story). Soon after the wreck, many U.S. manufacturers began moving their operations off-shore, so KARLEE had to work at defining its niche to compete in a global economy. It also become difficult to find team members with specific manufacturing skills, especially machinists; such manufacturing skills are becoming a lost art, Brumit said. "The view of manufacturing by the younger generation has not been one of innovation and excitement, thus making it even more difficult to attract the future workforce into this industry," she said, citing KARLEE’s success with developing the next generation and overall succession planning. Most Proud Moments "I’m really most proud of the difference we have made along the way in the lives of the people who have been a part of KARLEE," she said. "We call them the extended family. . . . You don’t just walk in and it’s a job; you walk in and it’s part of your family, and that makes a difference." Brumit recounts a story of a Hispanic team member who couldn’t speak English. KARLEE supported his education and skills development, and now he is a department manager at another company and his children are all English-speaking high school graduates. Several other current and former KARLEE team members have come to the company with basic accounting knowledge; some are now accomplished certified public accountants, with one a chief financial officer for another company and another running her own firm. "I think you live life with the purpose to make a difference. . . . It’s very rewarding to see people come in and be a part of the company and know that KARLEE wants them to grow to their full potential, even if that means they reach a point where KARLEE can’t provide that next opportunity and they leave us," she said. Brumit is also proud of the trust that customers have in the manufacturer, which has led to long-term relationships and referrals: "Customers trust us and know that we’re going to be honest with them. And we’re going to do everything in our power to make them a success." Advice for Senior Leaders "Perseverance is the key," she said. "You have to trust and have faith in your vision. Be very open, honest, and very appreciative of people. The team needs to feel your passion, energy, and commitment. They will follow your lead." Brumit added that seniors leaders "always have to keep the big picture in mind. Sometimes it’s not easy when you’re down in a valley struggling to see the next mountain top. . . . Our  big picture is that we always wanted to make a positive difference. We wanted our customers, our team members, our suppliers, and our community to be better because KARLEE existed. . . . So when you’re struggling in the valley, and you know that’s the big picture, it’s easy to stay the course and overcome the obstacles." Baldrige KARLEE receives 2000 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award from President George W. Bush. When it comes to recognitions, for which there have been many, Brumit said winning the Baldrige Award was the highlight. Brumit, who is also a founding member of the Baldrige-based Quality Texas Foundation, said KARLEE started using the Baldrige Criteria in the 1990s because she felt it was a "great platform to build our business on." Today, the company still uses the Criteria as its business model to help it stay agile in a changing industry. "For us, it’s the way we do business," Brumit said, referencing the Criteria for leadership development, voice-of-the-customer processes, key performance indicators, and measurements. She and several of her team members have also served as examiners for Quality Texas, a member of the Alliance for Performance Excellence and partner of the Baldrige Program. Baldrige was "never just a program for us. . . . It was really what we thought was a great model to run your business. . . . Baldrige allowed us be strategic, to manage by fact, and be process focused." She added that Baldrige also provided a community. "You should surround yourself with knowledge, whether it’s gained through relationships, or by study, but be a continuous learner. And I think Baldrige did that for us as well. . . . Being strong here in the Texas area, we had a great network of go-to people when we needed to consult experts about something or we just needed reinforcement." Being a Female Manufacturing CEO Brumit said as a female manufacturing CEO she was quite the novelty in the 1980s and 1990s. She was able to play that to her advantage to get in the door; however, she quickly learned that once in the door she had to prove that the company could perform to expectations. As a woman in manufacturing, Brumit said it had always been difficult to get support from the financial institutes, especially after the telecom industry collapse in the early 2000s. She recounted one negative experience where she felt a banker didn’t have any trust or confidence in the company because it was woman-owned (a rare thing for a manufacturer). Brumit said things have changed, and she’s often asked to serve on boards and other entities because of the diversity and experience that she brings to the table. Where Does KARLEE Go From Here? At KARLEE, succession planning is taken seriously, and Brumit said she’s blessed to have the next generation of leaders already in place, with mentors and coaches (herself included) in the wings. "I think . . . some companies don’t have that succession in place," she said. "They don’t think about their sustainability and what it takes to reach the next mountain top? Where do you want to go?" Brumit said the company has always done strategic planning, with both long- and short-term plans to keep up with the rapidly changing industry and customer expectations. KARLEE is always looking to see where the markets are moving/changing and where it needs to add capabilities. Brumit said she is especially excited that U.S. manufacturers are bringing their operations back to the United States (i.e., on-shoring). "The U.S. is regaining its global competitiveness. Manufacturing is important, and it’s coming back, and it does make a difference. . . .  Leaders and influencers in America realize that manufacturing is critical for our country. It makes us stronger and secure, creates jobs, and protects our future." Celebration In honor of its 40th anniversary, KARLEE invites past and present team members, customers, suppliers, and the business community to its Garland, TX, headquarters on Friday, June 13, 2014, to enjoy a day of fun and celebration. For information, contact rsvp@karlee.com. In addition, KARLEE will present at the 21st annual Texas Quest for Excellence Conference on June 23-24.

Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon A question I frequently get asked is whether the use of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence has to start with adoption at the senior leader level of the whole organization. The simple answer is that it is wonderful if it starts there, but that is not necessary. A Baldrige effort (journey) frequently starts with a single business unit or department. If that department has cross-functional responsibilities, it is even better because then partners need to get involved. While initial results may not impact the whole organization, the results certainly can benefit the organization and many of its customers. This is all background for discussing a recent article by Brett Simon (a current Baldrige Executive Fellow) and Sharon Muret-Wagstaff (a current Baldrige Judge), entitled, "Leading Departmental Change to Advance Perioperative Quality." The article is about organizational learning and improving performance outcomes. The work initiated in the anesthesia department at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center of Harvard Medical School. The research by Muret-Wagstaff and Simon relied on a model with three building blocks: (1) Leadership that reinforces learning; (2) A supportive learning environment; and, (3) Effective, concrete learning processes and practices. The anesthesia department used these building blocks to establish a cross-functional partnership to achieve perioperative performance excellence, a goal that serves both departmental and interdepartmental goals. The authors established a leadership team comprised of senior members from anesthesiology, surgery, nursing, orthopedics, and obstetrics and gynecology. Recognizing a need for leadership and spread across facilities, the program leaders created a pilot course in Leadership in Anesthesiology with the Sloan School of Management faculty at MIT. Leaders draw on the Baldrige Criteria and the balanced scorecard to align strategy and goals and to balance focus on patients and other stakeholders. Chartered teams are used to address individual 90-day improvement plans. In the first three years, this performance improvement model has achieved process improvements in quality, safety, and patient and family experiences. Furthermore this approach to infrastructure, systematic processes, and interdisciplinary learning and improvement engendered an increasingly receptive culture. The outcomes provide a compelling case proof to the success that can be achieved by building a Baldrige-based performance management system from within an organization with opportunities, in this case, for patient-centered improvements and organizational spread. As one participating anesthesiologist noted, "Instead of pointing fingers at each other we are sitting down and saying, ‘We can figure out how to improve this together.’ It’s a mindshift."

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey Applying for the Baldrige Award in order to receive feedback from trained examiners is just one way that some organizations use the Criteria for Performance Excellence. A much more common use of the Criteria relates to how an organization conducts its strategic planning and budgeting processes (category 2 of the Criteria). An example is the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada (GFOA), which in 2014 awarded the Village of Pinehurst, North Carolina, with its Distinguished Budget Presentation Award for the seventh consecutive year and for the first time with its Special Performance Measures Recognition. (The nonprofit GFAO is a professional association serving over 17,800 federal, state/provincial, and local finance officials throughout North America who are involved in planning, financing, and implementing governmental operations. Its mission is to enhance and promote the professional management of governmental financial resources by identifying, developing, and advancing fiscal strategies, policies, and practices for the public benefit.) To achieve the Special Performance Measures Recognition, a government financial department must receive a score of "outstanding" from three independent GFAO reviewers following specific criteria for unit goals and objectives. "This year was significant," according to a news report in the Pilot.com, "as it marked the year the Village implemented a new strategic planning methodology based on the Baldrige Criteria. Specifically, the Village adopted a balanced scorecard to improve the organization’s performance measurement and performance management. . . . These awards represent a significant achievement by the Village. [They] reflect the commitment of the Village Council and staff to meeting the highest principles of governmental budgeting." The Baldrige-based methodology implemented to receive the budget award had to adhere to nationally recognized guidelines designed to assess how well an entity’s budget serves as a policy document, a financial plan, an operations guide, and a communications device. In addition, the GFAO’s website highlights the need for organizations to follow "Tactical Financial Management" and features Baldrige Award recipient the City of Coral Springs as one of the "best resources" for business planning, "an integral part of [any organization's] management model." "A business plan translates the governing board’s strategic plan into the staff level actions and accountabilities needed to implement the strategies. A business plan makes it much easier to translate a strategic plan into a budget. When the translation is more precise, it will be easier to identify and remove spending from the budget that is not aligned with the strategic plan. Also, elected officials with more confidence that the budget is aligned with their priorities will be more supportive of the integrity of the spending plan throughout the year," according to the GFAO. In alignment with this GFAO definition, the Baldrige Criteria, without prescriptively telling an organization how it should conduct its strategic planning and budgeting, provide thoughtful considerations for developing and implementing a strategic plan, including considerations for innovation, work systems and core competencies, strategic objectives, action plan deployment and implementation, resource allocation, and performance measures and projections. How does your organization’s strategic planning and budgeting align with the GFAO and Baldrige Criteria?

Posted by Christine Schaefer How is a company to decide whether to use the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9001: 2008 Quality Management System (QMS), or both? To explore some key distinctions between the comprehensive business model provided by the Baldrige framework and the quality management system provided by ISO, I recently talked to someone who has used both in his work. He also has taught and presented on the value of each and the relationship between them. Ron Schulingkamp, ScD, MQM, MBA, has taught business leaders and MBA students alike about the Baldrige Criteria. As the senior strategic consultant for DM Petroleum Operations Company for more than a decade, Schulingkamp helped senior leaders transform the company into a high-performing organization that earned the Baldrige Award in 2005. As a visiting assistant professor in the College of Business of Loyola University in New Orleans, Schulingkamp has taught graduate business students how to use the Baldrige Criteria—which he describes as a "holistic, systems-based, high-performance business model"—to assess the performance of organizations, including local government organizations and companies where his students are employed.  Ron Schulingkamp Schulingkamp also has conducted quality audits in the petro-chemical industry using ISO standards. He keeps abreast of revisions to both the Baldrige framework (updated every two years) and the ISO 9001: QMS standard (last issued in 2008, with a revision coming out in 2015). The body of ISO 9000 standards includes ISO 9001: Quality Management System (QMS), which focuses on product and service quality for the customer. Schulingkamp noted recently that the ISO 9001: QMS is a systems approach based on systems thinking about management and that it encompasses all the processes and interconnections between the supplier and the customer. He also noted, however, that it doesn’t address the rest of the organization (e.g., health and safety, risk, financial, innovation, and environment—although there are separate ISO standards for those areas). He said he often recommends organizations start with the ISO 9001: QMS because "if properly implemented, it will provide the CEO and senior leadership team with a mental model for management based on an organizational system, not a functional silo." He added, "Often when senior leaders first read the [Baldrige Criteria], their response is, ‘Where does it tell me what to do?’ The concept of a nonprescriptive, interrelated, systems-based business model is contrary to teaching in most business schools." Why so? Schulingkamp explained, "The typical professor in business school is an expert in a very specific field of study. Business leaders usually have studied with brilliant professors in accounting, economics, marketing, management, statistics, etc. But it is rare for a business professor to be an expert on the interrelationship, alignment, and integration of business systems. In fact, few business schools teach ‘quality management’ beyond the level of an overview course."   To highlight differences between the Baldrige business model and the ISO 9001: QMS, Schulingkamp starts with a comparison of the Leadership category of the Baldrige Criteria and the Management Commitment clause of ISO:9001 QMS. He explained that senior leaders (in particular, the CEO), are responsible for developing management systems and creating value. "We know from ancient philosophers such as Aristotle to modern management gurus such as W.  Edwards Deming—plus hundreds of contemporary practitioners, researchers, and authors—that leadership is the key to improving organizational performance," said Schulingkamp. "Deming wrote and often spoke about the role of senior leadership and the importance of leaders’ understanding of systems thinking. For example, in his 1993 book The New Economics for Industry, Government, and Education, he described his "System of Profound Knowledge," a powerful construct that consists of four important concepts: (1) an appreciation of a system, (2) understanding of variation, (3) psychology and (4) epistemology, or a theory of knowledge." As Schulingkamp sees it, the ISO 9001: QMS "provides the structure and prescription for senior leaders to begin the process of understanding the organization as it relates to the customer." Schulingkamp pointed out that, in comparison to the Baldrige framework, the more prescriptive nature of the ISO 9001: QMS is demonstrated in the "shall" statements of its requirements. "The Baldrige framework provides a holistic, systems-based business model that builds alignment across the organization by making connections between and reinforcing organizational systems, processes, strategy, and results," he noted. To underline one difference, Schulingkamp raised the question, "How does ISO help you with strategic planning?" He pointed out that the ISO QMS standard asks about quality plans, but not strategic plans. In contrast, the Baldrige Criteria ask about strategy development and strategy implementation, which encompass systematic approaches for developing strategic objectives and action plans, implementing them, changing them as needed, and measuring progress. ISO also doesn’t ask about development of your workforce or leaders, Schulingkamp added. "If you fully implement the ISO 9001 QMS, you may be getting at less than half of what Baldrige asks about," he said. Illustrating the point, he described his experience in conducting ISO audits for petro-chemical companies; in particular, when he asked about customer complaints, businesses asked him what that has to do with ISO. "Although ISO requires the measurement of the quality management system processes and analyzes conformity to customer requirements and customer satisfaction, it is not unusual for an organization to focus on the customer requirements and miss the opportunity to manage the customer relationship," he said. In contrast, the Baldrige Criteria in effect ask for the organization to have a holistic approach to building long-term customer relationships, which is part of a customer relationship management system. Specifically, the Baldrige Criteria ask "how your organization engages its customers for long-term marketplace success, including how your organization listens to the voice of the customer, builds customer relationships, and uses customer information to improve and to identify opportunities for innovation." Another difference from the Baldrige framework, according to Schulingkamp, is that ISO does not specifically address learning or integration. "ISO addresses continual improvement as it relates to the QMS, which may infer learning, but is not really learning," he said. In contrast, he pointed out that the Baldrige Criteria address learning by asking about new knowledge or skills acquired through evaluation, study, experience, and innovation. The Baldrige Criteria also refer to two distinct kinds of learning: organizational and personal, he added. "The Criteria refer to organizational learning as learning achieved through research and development, evaluation and improvement cycles, ideas and input from the workforce and stakeholders, the sharing of best practices, and benchmarking; the Criteria refer to personal learning as learning achieved through education, training, and developmental opportunities that further individual growth."   Based on such differences, Schulingkamp values ISO as a "first step" toward a systems perspective and toward stimulating systems thinking by a senior leadership team. He sees in the tiered bands of the Baldrige scoring system a way to view the relationship between ISO 9001: QMS and the Baldrige Criteria; in this context, Schulingkamp sees use of QMS as a beginning approach in the lower bands. "The value of ISO [QMS] is that it teaches you about organizational systems, which is helpful to understanding Baldrige," he said. To depict the complementary way a business can use both the Baldrige Criteria and ISO standards to ensure product quality and overall performance excellence, Schulingkamp suggested this analogy: "the Baldrige framework is like the blueprint of a building, with ISO used for specific systems within the building such as electrical and air conditioning systems."

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey Being "the purest Baldrige colony on the planet" is #15 of 32 in the culture statement that  2009 Baldrige Award recipient MidwayUSA uses to define itself. According to founder and CEO Larry Potterfield, the statement spells out how employees should treat each other, how employees serve Stakeholders, and how Midway runs its business. The components are aligned with the values of its Customers, so naturally employees are aligned as well. The first 11 components are the core values of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence; said Potterfield, "We want a culture that lives with, drives on the core values of Baldrige." MidwayUSA CEO and FounderLarry Potterfield I recently asked Potterfield about the organization’s approach to Baldrige continuous improvement and how it lives up to its vision "to be the best-run, most-respected business in America for the benefit of our Customers." How has MidwayUSA changed since 2009 and how has it stayed engaged with the Baldrige Criteria? "The growth of the company continues at unprecedented rates," said Potterfield. The organization’s ability to respond to and deliver value for Customers continues to improve all the time. In addition, MidwayUSA, an internet retailer of shooting, hunting, and outdoor products, continues to have an "unprecedented approach to and interest in Baldrige," said Potterfield. "I’ve not found an organization with the enthusiasm or bench strength that Midway has in Baldrige." In fact, Baldrige examiner training is part of leadership development and a professional credential for up-and-coming managers. Five MidwayUSA managers have served as examiners for the Baldrige Program and 40 as examiners for the Baldrige-based Missouri Quality Award. "The very finest thing that has ever happened to me as a business administrator," said Potterfield (adding that he has a bachelor’s degree in accounting and a master’s of science degree in management), "the very greatest education and the very greatest benefit that I have ever been able to find in terms of becoming an administrator has come through the Business Criteria, from applying it in what I call this laboratory MidwayUSA. . . . This is a phenomenal organization in terms of its performance and focus on Customers. It’s a role model for Missouri. It’s a role model for the nation. And it’s all because someone took the time to put the Baldrige Criteria together and keep it current all these years." Potterfield added that MidwayUSA calls the Baldrige Criteria a "collection of leadership and management principles. This is how you should manage your organization. Use the Criteria book. . . . Business administration is simply what Baldrige is." To give back to the community and improve public education in Missouri, in 2013, Larry and his wife Brenda donated $1 million to the Foundation for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for the first K-12 school district in the state to win a Baldrige Award. "Where do you get a million dollars to give away? It comes from success in the business. That success—huge, huge amounts of it—come from Baldrige." Speaking of that success, as the CEO, for what are you most proud? Potterfield said he is happiest talking about employee satisfaction, for which MidwayUSA’s goal is 86%; the small business is currently at 88%—the highest percentage yet recorded. When MidwayUSA received the Baldrige Award in 2009, employee satisfaction was at 82%, and Potterfield admits that he didn’t really understand how to get it any higher. In 2009, Midway’s approach to satisfaction included an annual survey and a focus group led by a middle manager. Today, MidwayUSA conducts semi-annual employee surveys, with focus groups led by the president of the company. Each focus group stays very specific, focusing on the lowest-scoring items, with the goal to address changes to processes and/or policies that would improve employee satisfaction in the particular department on the particular item. Potterfield said this has been a "game-winning approach," especially considering that half of the employees are hourly. MidwayUSA has continued to benchmark other Baldrige Award winners and today even teaches employee satisfaction through lunch-and-learn sessions with other Missouri companies. Those sessions are part of a local Columbia, MO, support group that Potterfield conceived in 2008 called America Needs Baldrige!: Baldrige Performance Excellence Group (BPEG). Since the first meeting in March 2010, 11 meetings typically have been held each year on Baldrige-related topics. Presenters are always a MidwayUSA vice president, the president, or the CEO, with presentations/white papers shared. Midway even shares instructions of how to create a Baldrige support group (BPEG) in your own community. Baldrige asks for an organization’s mission, vision, values, and purpose. What is the importance of these for MidwayUSA? Potterfield said that the small business has had a mission statement for the last 20 years, but it’s the vision statement that’s truly powerful—and can be recited by just about every employee. "All of the things that we do here are based on that simple, little vision," Potterfield said. "I can’t imagine a more powerful vision. If there’s a stronger vision statement in America, then I’d love to see it." Potterfield said that when the small business first got involved with the Baldrige Criteria, it struggled to articulate its values. Over the years, the organization has learned that it’s human beings (not organizations) who have values, so MidwayUSA adopted "the nine most important human values: the non-negotiable family principles that guide us." Nobody gets in the door, or stays, if they don’t have these nine values. "You want a culture of trust," Potterfield said, "if everybody shares these values, you have a much greater possibility of having a trusting organization than any other words that you could put down on a piece of paper." What are you working on next regarding Baldrige? Last year, Potterfield worked to get a bill introduced in Missouri that would give a tax break to qualified state small businesses that win a Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Although the bill didn’t initially pass, Potterfield is more confident that it will this fall. From the state of Missouri, such a bill might be picked up by other Baldrige community members, Potterfield said, and driven in other states and then nationally. "I wish we could get Baldrige deployed to America," Potterfield added.

Posted by Christine Schaefer   The Baldrige Performance Excellence Program has long relied on a wide network of experts to help us inform organizations in every sector about how the Baldrige framework can help them boost their performance for the long term. Organizations that have used the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence to improve and excel, particularly Baldrige Award recipients—as well as the large corps of current and past Baldrige examiners who have conducted organizational assessments using the Criteria—often speak to national and international organizations with whom they work or within their local communities about the Baldrige Criteria and related offerings. To support such presentations, the Baldrige Program annually revises and makes freely available a set of educational resources about the Criteria for Performance Excellence and the Baldrige Program. Whether you are planning a presentation—or are just interested in learning more about the Baldrige framework and the national program behind it—consider downloading one or more of the nine PowerPoint presentations posted on the Baldrige Ambassadors web page. The 2014 files include the following: ·         The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award: Describes the purposes of the award and benefits of applying for it, outlines the eligibility categories and conditions for applying for the Baldrige Award, provides general schedule information and steps in the annual award process, describes the role of Baldrige examiners, provides historical scoring data from the Baldrige Award process, and lists award recipients to date in each sector ·         Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence: Comprehensively examines the foundational framework and core values of the Baldrige Criteria and each category; also provides testimonials from senior leaders of organizations using the Criteria in the business/nonprofit sector Sample Slide from "Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence" presentation ·         Baldrige Education Criteria for Performance Excellence: Same as above, focused on Education Criteria with testimonials from education organizations ·         Baldrige Health Care Criteria for Performance Excellence: Same as above, focused on Health Care Criteria with testimonials from health care organizations ·         Introduction to the Baldrige Criteria: Introduces the basic purposes and evolution of the Criteria for Performance Excellence, provides a primer on the framework (e.g., describing the systems perspective and core values and concepts), and outlines how to start using the Criteria and related offerings of the Baldrige Program ·         Performance Excellence: A Systems Approach and Tools: Details how the Baldrige Criteria can be used effectively as an umbrella or systemic model for organizational performance excellence, complementing such tools and approaches as Six Sigma, Lean, and ISO 9001 ·         Baldrige Program Impacts: Provides recent data on beneficial impacts of the Baldrige Criteria and national program, particularly in the health care sector, and describes factors in this success, including the network of Baldrige-based programs that are part of the Alliance for Performance Excellence. Also profiles and highlights results of the most recent (2013) Baldrige Award winners ·         Introduction to the Baldrige Program: Summarizes the history, accomplishments, and offerings of the Baldrige Program for organizations to get started on a Baldrige journey ·         Self-Assessing Your Organization with the Baldrige Criteria: Outlines uses of the Baldrige Criteria and related resources offered by the Baldrige Program for organizational self-assessments These sets of slides can be customized for use in presentations before organizations of any size and sector. We hope you’ll share how you’ve spread the word about Baldrige for the benefit of organizations in your industry, community, or professional sphere of influence.

Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon I have found myself in numerous conversations lately about continuous improvement and innovation. Is there a difference between the two concepts? Is the distinction important? While the lines between improvement and innovation might blur, I think there are conceptual differences that are important and worth understanding. Innovation is about breakthrough change or discontinuous improvement. Improvement, as generally referenced, is about continuous improvement, doing the same thing better, faster, cheaper with less waste. Innovation is about disrupting the existing process or product and conceiving or re-conceiving from the start. Improvement is about higher levels of performance; innovation is about new dimensions of performance. Improvement processes generally yield positive results. Innovation processes might result in success. Innovation involves risk-taking. Innovation decisions are generally strategic, aligned with organizational planning.  Innovation attempts will sometimes result in failure. That potential should be recognized at the outset and lack of success should be rewarded for the attempt, not punished for the failure. In most organizations, improvement activities are locally chartered, might require some managerial approval, but rarely require senior leadership involvement. Innovation is more challenging. Senior leaders must set the supportive environment, encourage outside-the-box thinking, reward success and failure, participate in decisions about which intelligent risks to pursue, and make the resources  (people, time, and funding) available to support innovation projects. Henry Ford Health System (HFHS), a 2011 Baldrige Award recipient, considers innovation to be one of its core competencies. HFHS strives for innovations in four areas: clinical research and technology, facilities, services and access points, and processes. Innovations have included health kiosks in community faith-based organizations and demonstration kitchens in the hospital where patient’s families can learn healthy cooking. Cargill Kitchen Solutions (formerly Sunny Fresh Foods), a two-time Baldrige Award recipient, defines two types of innovation: customer focused innovation and high performance innovation. Customer focused innovations involve converting knowledge and insight into new customer products and services. High performance innovations involve converting knowledge and insight into new processes that help create distinctive value, competitive advantage, and profitable growth. HFHS sums it all up with two equations: ideas + execution = innovation, and innovation + accountability = sustainable growth. What is your organization doing to achieve sustainable growth?    

Posted by Christine Schaefer In a recent blog, "Emotional Hijacking: Why Logic Doesn’t Work with Angry Customers," Gallup Senior Strategist of Customer Experience and Innovation John Timmerman provides considerations that organizations can use both to prevent and manage customer complaints. Timmerman also shared with us the science behind his blog, noting "Customers experience ego depletion (inability to use rational judgment) because the amygdala (part of the brain that controls emotions) can freeze up the logical functions of the brain. This becomes more exacerbated because the amygdala is triggered by an aversion to loss such as a customer perceiving they are at the losing end of the equation. The perceived loss of not receiving fair treatment can trigger the amygdala which overrides rationale thinking and puts emotions in full control of behavioral response." Illuminating the futility of some responses to angry customers, Timmerman added, "The ego depletion increases as employees try to use rational responses when the customer is only tuned into an emotional channel. The fatigue of ego depletion becomes worse as the customer is handed off to other people and escalates into a full emotional hijacking." For organizations to avoid such situations, Timmerman’s blog lays out "six rules to prevent emotional hijacking." Such insights complement information that the Baldrige Program makes available on national role-model organizations that have developed strong customer-focused processes—and thus reaped beneficial results in the areas of customer satisfaction and engagement (item 7.2 of the Baldrige Criteria). For example, 2010 Baldrige Award recipient K&N Management (profile linked as PDF file) has achieved results in its restaurants that demonstrate that it has long recognized the importance of building strong customer relationships. The Texas-based small business has systematic processes for serving customers’ needs to engage them and build relationships (item 3.2 in the Baldrige Criteria). Those processes include both preventative practices and immediate and effective management of complaints if and when a customer has indicated dissatisfaction. As the organization stated in its 2010 Baldrige Award application (publicly available on the Baldrige website), "The food service industry demands fast resolution to guest dissatisfaction." K&N Management described its process for managing complaints in part as follows, "Most of our complaints are submitted while the guest is still in the store, thus we have implemented a process to quickly handle and satisfy guest complaints when submitted at the store level. Verbal in-store comments and complaints are largely handled by [team members] and managers who are trained and empowered to delight the guest through hospitality and quality control. In-house complaints are processed initially by [team members] by replacing product that does not satisfy the guest." K&N’s approach to managing complaints appears to align with scientific insights conveyed by Timmerman. To wit, its restaurant employees "are fully trained on guest delight during training and are coached to personally take ownership of any guest complaint and resolve it based on verbal and non-verbal cues from the guest." K&N’s complaint management system is depicted below.   Graphic used with permission in this blog.                 "Our goal is not just to resolve the complaint and make whatever is wrong right, but to go a step further and create a delighted guest by turning a negative into a positive," said K&N Management Co-Owner Ken Schiller recently. "Doing this builds relationships and creates long-term raving fans. Our team members know we will recognize and reward their actions in achieving this result and they will never be reprimanded for doing too much to delight a guest." How do people in your organization address angry customers? Do you have a systematic approach for building customer relationships that creates "long-term raving fans"?

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey In a recent Baldrige Foundation survey, some respondents noted that "non-award-based organizational assessments" were a product that they wished the Baldrige Program would offer. However, such a program is currently offered, and it is called the Baldrige Collaborative Assessment. Following are some of the most common questions-with answers—about this organizational assessment. Why does your organization need this? Organizations receive actionable, timely, customized feedback on their strengths and opportunities for improvement through the lens of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, a proven framework for organizational improvement. The assessment, conducted by trained Baldrige examiners, offers an opportunity for organizations to get a fresh, outside perspective on their key processes and results to help guide them to the next level of performance. The examiners sent to perform the assessment are among the Baldrige Program’s most experienced, senior-level examiners, and the program does its best to match up their backgrounds with the type of organization being assessed. In addition, organizations can even customize the assessment to ask the examiners to focus on particular areas of their operations needing the greatest focus. Why do you need this? The examiners conduct the organizational assessment in a collaborative fashion, offering real-time feedback, followed by a written report. You will have the opportunity to ask questions about the findings, including questions about potential blind spots or vulnerabilities that the examiners find. You will receive actionable feedback, supported by evidence, to discuss with your leadership team. The feedback includes suggested priority actions for where your resources might be most effectively used. For this organizational assessment, you don’t need to write a 50-page application, and there is no pressure on you or your workforce because the Baldrige Collaborative Assessment is not part of or connected to an award. How will it help you beat your competitors? As Baldrige examiners are experts in performance excellence, your organization will have the ability to work with them side-by-side to focus on your key priorities or challenges. This has led to key learnings for many organizations to answer the question, "What’s critical to our success?" To help answer that question, examiners use the Baldrige Criteria that highlights an organization’s core competencies—those strategically important capabilities that are central to fulfilling an organization’s mission or that provide an advantage in its market or service environment—as well as an organization’s strategic challenges, strategic advantages, and its entire system. This in-depth focus on your organization’s greatest areas for improvement will sharpen your competitive edge. Following the assessment, a detailed report is prepared and sent to your organization with recommendations along with additional information to assist your organization in taking action on the recommendations. How will this motivate your workforce? Because the examiner team comes to your organization, and there is no award pressure attached to the assessment, numerous staff members can get engaged in sharing, learning, and collaborating with the Baldrige examiners. The approach is conversational, which has the ability to energize workforce members who can be a part of the collaboration. What will you need to do? You will need to complete an Organizational Profile questionnaire to enable the  examiners to gain a better understanding of your organization’s operating environment, organizational relationships, and key strategic challenges and advantages. You will work with the examiner team leader to plan the assessment, including the scope, logistics, and other key documents that may be needed by the examiners. You will collaborate with the examiners during a 4-1/2-day site visit of your organization in which the examiners will collect data, analyze the data, and formulate feedback. At the conclusion of the site visit, you will gather your organization’s leaders to participate in a closing meeting at which the examiners present findings and high-priority recommendations. How do you get started? Contact the Baldrige Program at 301-975-2036 or baldrige@nist.gov.

No blog today;  just a wishing you a safe and happy 4th of July. Blogrige posts resume next Tuesday, July 8th.  See you then! US Flag at NIST

Posted by Christine Schaefer We sometimes hear of organizations adopting the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence in relatively limited ways to improve performance. They may start by just adopting core concepts and values behind the Baldrige framework. They may conduct a self-assessment with their employees in just a few categories of the Baldrige Criteria. They may be able to do these things, at least initially, in only one department. They may not yet have buy-in from their organization’s senior leadership. To share how others might scale use of the Baldrige Criteria to their situation, I recently interviewed two department leaders who started using the Baldrige framework just with the people who provide support services to the rest of their organization. The story they shared is one of a positive transformation in the workplace culture of the University of Kansas Medical Center. It began three years ago after eight administrative and operations departments started benefitting from foundational concepts and assessment questions in the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. The boost in workforce engagement and related results—particularly in the quality of work provided by the support services to other departments—reportedly became apparent within the first year, creating a momentum for changes that continue to spread across the organization today. Choosing Baldrige Steffani Webb, vice chancellor for administration at the University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC)—who is also a new Baldrige Executive Fellow—had initially heard about the Baldrige Criteria in a graduate business class that had used a Baldrige case study to learn about organizational management. "The Baldrige framework seemed to me a very comprehensive but still simple approach linking together all the important aspects of management and leadership and operations," Webb said. Webb oversees central support-services departments that encompass human resources, information resources, public safety, parking, facilities, landscaping, finance, and compliance functions. These departments, she said, had tended to be viewed as "very bureaucratic, focused on tasks and policy and processes, regardless of how effective those were in meeting the needs of those they needed to serve." In deciding to adopt Baldrige "in a subset of the organization almost as a pilot," Webb said she figured "if it was successful there—even if we never took it wider in the organization—it would benefit the organization by making those functions better for people." Inspiration and Tools for the Journey In September 2011, Webb and two colleagues—including Tom Field, KUMC’s associate vice chancellor for organizational improvement—attended a Baldrige regional conference in Kansas City, Missouri. They learned about using the Baldrige Criteria in presentations by senior leaders of several high-performing organizations that had received the Baldrige Award. That same year, Field became a Baldrige examiner, and a colleague became a state-level examiner with the closest Alliance for Performance Excellence program. The examiner training and experience they each gained in using the Baldrige framework to evaluate organizations "really helped," said Field. According to Field, the KUMC group left the Baldrige regional conference with "inspiration and enthusiasm" about using the Baldrige framework in their organization. He noted that a helpful exercise at the conference used a relatively simple Criteria-based assessment tool provided by the Baldrige Program called Are We Making Progress? (AWMP). Within their organization, Webb, Field, and others initially used the AWMP self-assessment tool as a "to-do list." According to Webb, managers and leaders used the survey to identify areas to work on; they also have now used it more broadly throughout the organization to address gaps in performance. For example, they reallocated funding to support an internal communications position. "From my perspective, AWMP was a catalyst for everything we did," said Field. Today, KUMC is also using AWMP "as a key piece of our employee engagement survey," said Field. They are planning to send this year’s survey to all employees of the organization for the first time; the 2012 and 2013 surveys went only to support services employees, who constitute about 20% of the medical center’s overall workforce. According to Webb, the initial Baldrige-based assessment they conducted in the administrative departments focused on the workforce (category 5 of the Baldrige Criteria) in order to improve services. "We wanted to create a culture around engaging and empowering the workforce," she said. "Next we started to get more effective about instituting organizational values and goals." Drawing from the Leadership category of the Baldrige Criteria, they worked on "better conveying those values and goals in order to bridge the gap between ‘management’ and the workforce." Ongoing Training Using the university’s mascot, KUMC’s Baldrige journey has been named the "Jayhawk Way," and the related training program is known as "Leading the Jayhawk Way." Field conveyed the "big goals of the training" as follows: (1) to create an internal brand for the workforce—i.e., one promoting workforce members as "highly motivated people aligned to a shared vision of important work, to make this a place where you wouldn’t want to leave," (2) to create alignment in the organization (because "we had been very task-focused but not necessarily connected to the organization’s greater vision"), and (3) to "improve how we communicate with each other and create a culture of open, constructive communication." After two "waves" of training provided over the past two years, the voluntary program has now served 709 participants from KUMC, including 100 faculty members of the organization. Registrants include employees from a partner hospital, the parent organization, and two other medical center campuses, some of whom will be driving great distances to participate. What’s more, a partner business of KUMC has expressed interest in sending executives to a future session. The Impact Improvements that Webb, Field, and others at KUMC have seen so far have exceeded their expectations. "What happened was that changes in the levels of engagement and quality of work that people were doing caught the attention of people in other parts of the organization," said Webb. "I figured implementation would be slow, but the truth is that it has lit a fire." Webb and Field both cited the "culture of appreciation" that has developed as a significant change. For example, "the facilities and landscaping staff began to receive notes of thanks from other departments—it was never the case before that people acknowledged each other’s efforts," Webb said. She noted that traditionally some of those employees weren’t allowed much say in their work; "they were told what and how to do the work," but that now they are encouraged to speak up to suggest improvements to better serve customers. KU Facilities Group   How long did it take before improvements became apparent? According to Webb, some positive changes were evident almost immediately in the workforce after the launch of Baldrige efforts; one year later, "the organization was very different." She attributes the success so far of the improvement initiative to the early focus on people—the "ones at every level of the organization who know where the problems are." "It’s nice to see people who for most of their careers were way in the background who now understand the connection between what they’re doing and the more glamorous [work of the organization]," she said. Most administrative employees will never interact with a patient or a student served by the larger organization, she added, but "they now understand that none of that great work can happen without them." KU Landscaping Group   The Verdict "The [Baldrige] model is outstanding—even if you only use it in your own area, improving your part of the organization is good," said Webb. "In doing so, you demonstrate what’s possible. This is enabling the future growth of our organization." While Webb acknowledged "our organization still has a long way to go" in its journey to excellence, she stressed, "This has been so much easier than I ever thought it would be. As one employee said, ‘We moved a rock and started a landslide.’"

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey Much has been discussed about the value of tomorrow’s leaders learning about the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence while still in school. As an example, I remember listening to a presentation by Bruce Kintz, president of Concordia Publishing House, a 2011 Baldrige Award recipient, about how he remembered that the Baldrige Criteria were part of his leadership training when he came to the struggling publish house; as a new president, he implemented the Baldrige Criteria and turned the organization’s future around. Over time, the Baldrige community has worked hard to plant the seeds of Baldrige in academia through dedicated professors with Baldrige examiner experience, presentations, participation at conferences (in fact, my colleague recently staffed a Baldrige booth at the Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs conference), LinkedIn groups, and meetings with deans and professors, among other initiatives. But like anything today, more brand name awareness, more education, and more proof of outcomes are always needed. As students are one of the largest groups that contact the Baldrige Program’s customer service line, we recently developed a "Criteria 101″ document (found on the Baldrige website’s home page under Popular Links) that specifically answers their what, how, why, and where questions in simple language. We’ve also been reaching out to professors, as time allows, to ask how and why they teach the Criteria and what the Baldrige Program might provide to support them. We’ve learned that professors who teach the Criteria, most often use them as a management and/or self-assessment tool, often asking students to assess a Baldrige case study or their own organizations (either dreamed up or real) start with the Organizational Profile and then ask students to develop strategy and deployment, with objectives and metrics, until they can build an organizational system and understand its complexities and needs for alignment review Baldrige case studies (including scorebooks) from a variety of sectors, as well as actual Baldrige Award recipients’ application summaries and profiles practice the Baldrige approach-deployment-learning-integration (ADLI) and levels-trends-comparisons-integration (LeTCI) approaches, and then ask students to offer organizational improvement suggestions view Baldrige multimedia on YouTube and flickr use Baldrige self-assessment tools such as Are We Make Progress? and easyInsight: Take a First Step Toward a Baldrige Self-Assessment focus on the Criteria’s Core Values as the basis for an assessment project, requiring students to extract the relevant themes from the Core Value descriptions and use them as a basis for assessing their own organizations help students to realize a performance excellence initiative for their own organizations According to Ferris State University professor Dr. Anita Fagerman, a current examiner for Baldrige-based Michigan Performance Excellence, there is great value for students in learning about the Baldrige Criteria: "The Criteria are so important to assessing an organization to determine where you’re at and where you want to be. . . . [Use of the Baldrige Criteria] is all encompassing, cross-cutting. It keeps an eye on the money at the same time as addressing business concepts." She added that teaching the Organizational Profile yields some of the best insights from students. Dr. Britt Watwood, who teaches an  online interdisciplinary doctorate program on leadership at Creighton University and who is a former examiner and judge for the Baldrige-based Georgia Oglethorpe Award, said, "What always impressed me about Baldrige is not that it tells you how to do quality but asks you the right questions that drive the thinking that leaders need. Quality is just the lens that helps leaders become better. I can think of no better lens for leadership than Baldrige." He added, "I would continue to use the Criteria for leadership questions about quality . . . because the Criteria are well thought through, and the systemic approach is what really grabs the students’ attention." Dr. Jim Evans, a professor at the Carl H. Lindner College of Business at the University of Cincinnati and former Baldrige judge and examiner, has collected reflections from his masters’ of health administration students on learning about Baldrige: It is my personal goal to attempt to receive the Baldrige Award, whether as a CEO or merely as a person working for a company attempting to improve itself through the Baldrige process.  I anticipate that my in-depth training in the Baldrige process . . . will be a real asset to me and as well as my organization as we begin our own journey toward excellence. The last page of the "Criteria 101″ document contains information that deans and professors who may not have looked at the Criteria for years—even decades—may find of interest. In fact, these links were recently shared with a dean at the Yale School of Business who said he felt that his colleagues’ knowledge on Baldrige should be refreshed. So, please help in planting and sowing the seeds of Baldrige with tomorrow’s leaders. Feel free to share the "Criteria 101″ document with professors in higher education in your area, and we will keep sharing, too. And if you teach Baldrige or can share pearls of wisdom on how to encourage deans and other professors to take a second look at the Criteria, please share!

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

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

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

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