Posted by Christine Schaefer Last week, Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday—a member of the Board of Overseers of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award—was named the 2014 Policy Leader of the Year by the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE). As former superintendent of Iredell-Statesville (NC) Schools, Holliday led a transformation in the performance of the 20,000-student district starting in 2002. The district (profile linked as PDF) received the Baldrige Award in 2008. Holliday’s leadership of the Iredell-Statesville Schools using the Baldrige Education for Performance Excellence is featured in the book Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence (see page 68). Holliday served as a Baldrige examiner for eight years prior to his current three-year term on the Board of Overseers. He has been a vocal champion of using the Baldrige framework for organizational improvement and excellence in U.S. education. As he recently stated, "The last six years have seen tremendous policy changes in education, not only in Kentucky but across the nation. Kentucky has implemented policies to enact more rigorous college and career-ready standards, assessments, accountability, professional development, teacher and leader effectiveness, data-driven decision making, and a focus on results." "Those familiar with the Baldrige Criteria will recognize that Kentucky has implemented policies that address the seven components of the Baldrige Criteria," he added. "As a leader, the most practical and impactful training I have ever received was through the Baldrige examiner program. Our success in improving education in Iredell-Statesville and now in Kentucky can certainly be attributed to lessons learned from examiner training and the implementation of the Baldrige Criteria." In recent years, Holliday also has served on the board of directors of the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Assessment Governing Board, and he co-chaired the task force of the Commission on the Accreditation of Educator Preparation that developed preparation standards for new educators. The NASBE award, which Holliday will accept at the association’s national conference in October, is an annual honor that recognizes the contributions of a national or state-level policymaker to education. Previous winners include retired General Colin Powell (former U.S. Secretary of State), James B. Hunt (former governor of North Carolina), Gaston Caperton (former governor of West Virginia), Jennifer Granholm (former governor of Michigan), U.S. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, Richard Riley (former U.S. Secretary of Education and governor of South Carolina), Tom Kean (former governor of New Jersey), former First Lady Barbara Bush, Richard Daley (former mayor of Chicago), and U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia. "Commissioner Holliday’s dedication to improving public education and his achievements are renowned in Kentucky and nationwide," said NASBE Executive Director Kristen Amundson. "His work in cooperation with the Kentucky State Board of Education has made the state a national leader."

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey In the spring, ASQ, in collaboration with the Baldrige Program and the Foundation for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, developed and distributed an electronic market survey to test interest in a Baldrige certification. For most of the 29 survey questions, approximately half of all respondents agreed or strongly agreed that there was a need for and value in a "Certified Baldrige Organizational Excellence Professional." While these responses represented interest in the certification, that positive response rate did not meet the demand/interest threshold that ASQ has seen in other successfully launched certifications, according to Ray Zielke, ASQ’s Baldrige Contract Manager. Based on the demographics of respondents and comments surrounding key questions, it appears that the segment of respondents with the least support of the certification were national examiners. "The creation of an ASQ or ASQ/Partner certification requires a significant investment of time and financial resources. At this time, the potential partners do not think the survey results merit the type of investment necessary to develop and launch a Baldrige Certification," said Zielke. "Rather, it is suggested that BPEP, the Foundation, ASQ, and all members of the Enterprise concentrate on other focused activities to generate awareness, interest, and use of the Baldrige framework." The survey was distributed through ASQ to 2,723 e-mail addresses of individuals who purchased a Baldrige-related product or downloaded Baldrige-related content and through the Baldrige Program’s entire electronic mailing list of about 16,500. ASQ currently offers 18 quality-related professional certifications. ASQ has a systematic and proven process for developing professional certifications that follows the ISO 17024 standard, is overseen by the ASQ Certification Board, and is administered by the ASQ Certification Workgroup. One of the first steps in the process is for the sponsoring group to work with ASQ Marketing to complete an international marketing survey to understand market demand. If the demand is deemed substantial and all other criteria are satisfactorily addressed, the Certification Board is likely to give approval to proceed. If it is determined that there is significant market demand, the sponsoring group commences with a job analysis that defines the major tasks to be performed by the certified individual.

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey In "Award Recipients Respond on How They Lead," we shared insights from 2013 Baldrige Award recipient seniors leaders related to their journeys to excellence. There was so much thoughtful reflection that it couldn’t fit in just one blog. More insights follow: How did you convey to colleagues that your organization was on a continuous improvement journey? "We’re getting great results. We’re changing; we’re growing; we’re improving year over year. That’s energizing. . . . I don’t know what CEOs say to their workforce when they are working very hard and not getting results and not improving. . . . The results speak for themselves. There is something about putting this [Baldrige] framework in place that works." —Sutter Davis Hospital (SDH) CEO Janet Wagner "We received a wonderful award, but that doesn’t stop the journey. . . . The journey is around a continuation of excellence. . . . Each child deserves to get better and to learn and to grow. So is ‘good,’ good enough for those children, or do they deserve better than that? Every time I see a data wall, it reminds me—it’s not good enough. It has to get better, because those kids deserve it." —Pewaukee School District (PWD) Human Resources Director Susan Muenter What was the breakthrough moment for you during your Baldrige journey? In other words, what was the "ah-ha" moment when you knew you were on the right path? When we started to see data as active (e.g., at PWD, the use of dashboards focused the district on measuring processes not just on measuring an event after the fact; departments started to use data on monthly or quarterly bases to look at improvements and to ensure that no child is lagging behind). When accountability systems came into the strategic planning process. When employees started talking about a process or initiative and taking responsibility for it. When a Baldrige feedback report challenged us to define our core competency (e.g., when a multidisciplinary team at SDH set out to define "the Sutter Davis Difference," team members had to define themselves as an organization: we care for each other, we care for patients, and we care for the community). When you realize that your mission really is something that people understand (e.g., at PWD, a lunch lady wanting to make lunchtime a wonderful experience for students, some of whom have said that it’s the best part of their day). What advice would you give other organizations to stay on their continuous improvement journeys? Stay the course, and know that results don’t improve without improving process. Continue to build more and more systems and utilize the Baldrige framework. Keep stepping, because with every step you take, you continue to improve. Build ideas, innovations in a multitude of places. Keep your eye on the "why" of continuous improvement—whether it’s for a child or patient or customer. Then learn "how" through the Baldrige Criteria. Don’t quit. Leaders don’t quit. Without a valid leader, the team doesn’t have anywhere to go. Leadership is discipline, accountability, and staying the course. If you have the opportunity to be a Baldrige Award recipient again, what’s a future trend that you may be asked about? Health Care: Patient safety (still), especially across the continuum of care. Education: More personalized instruction with less resources. Being more efficient with resources (people, money, and time). Having more flexibility in school schedules, with more technology and opportunity in high schools to replace some but not all face-to-face time.

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey In his article "A Road Map for the Future," Jim Smith promotes the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence as a systems framework for managing change, focusing on the customer, and placing emphasis on delivering outstanding business results. Smith, a blogger for Quality Magazine, has 45+-years manufacturing experience, from working on the factory floor as a blue-collar worker to retiring as a senior manager at one of the larger divisions in a Fortune 30 company. I recently reached out to him to better understand his perspective; following is the interview. You write that the Baldrige Criteria can help an organization focus on the customer. Why do you think such a focus is important for manufacturing professionals today?  If you’re not focused on the customer, you’re not going to be around long. One of my quotes that is used in our quality training is that "customer satisfaction is the barometer by which true quality is measured." Quality is no longer an element of customer satisfaction, it is fundamental to an organization’s survival. When it comes to quality, the customer’s vote is the only one that really matters. I’ve written pieces published in Quality Magazine’s "Face of Quality" with those themes. One of the Baldrige Program’s biggest challenges, in my opinion, is helping manufacturers see the value that the Criteria’s organization-wide perspective brings in improving the entire organization’s system end-to-end. From your experience with the Baldrige Criteria, what do you think they offer to organizations that other quality improvement methods like Lean and Six Sigma do not? Or, in other words, what would make a manufacturing professional take a second look at the Criteria?  The Baldrige Criteria not only focus on quality and leadership but on business results. In addition, they can be used as a model for positive change. Quality professionals need to be the translators (communicators) to senior managers about the value of the Baldrige because there is an alphabet soup out there of various initiatives. There is no silver bullet, but the Baldrige is about as good of a model for change, etc., as there is out there. The others focus at a different level and, for the most part, don’t involve the corner office. You write that organizations that gain the most benefit from continuous improvement use the Criteria as a model for change. Why is having such a model so important today? On the subject of continuous improvement, the Baldrige stresses strategic management, knowing what’s important to your organization and the progress you’re making to get there. From that perspective, it is a model that stresses continuous improvement as a way of life. This provides for an organizational culture, which in turn provides the spark for the pursuit of excellence. As Dr. W. Edwards Deming indicated in his 14th point, such a model provides the energy to "get everyone working on the transition." Part of the law that established the Baldrige Program and Criteria was for role-model organizations to share best practices for benchmarking. What’s the importance of such benchmarking today? Benchmarking has been around for a while (I was corporate benchmarking and continuous improvement manager at my company back in 1996, so I know just enough to be dangerous), but it can be an expensive venture. However, the requirement that Baldrige winners share their best practices allows most everyone to learn (inexpensively) from the best. The danger of benchmarking (as Juran and Deming indicated) is for companies that do not fully understand their own processes. For instance, when Motorola received the Baldrige Award in 1988, the best practice was Six Sigma. Many companies have fallen short of implementing a similar program because of lack of understanding of what it really takes to implement such a program. I was involved at my company when we implemented a MAJOR initiative, but it still took us awhile to get ready before we embarked on such an aggressive effort. When organizations question why they might consider doing a Baldrige self-assessment or applying for Baldrige Award feedback, we often ask the leaders how they know how they are doing without such an assessment. Such conversations have led to discussions of organizations measuring the right things at the right time and gathering data to use for action. What do you see as the importance of measurement systems? The problem most organizations have is overestimating their performance in a lot of things. This is true whether it is technical or behavioral. The problem rests in two camps. Senior management may have their heads in the sand in the first place. Many of those managers came up through the organization and likely had a good feel for the environment, but they have been isolated, with their paradigms somewhat frozen in time. Most companies have developed stop-light metrics to give themselves a better understanding, but for most, it has not been a success. Way too many (often confusing) metrics may hide the most important elements of a business. In the second camp are the quality professionals. They know what’s going on but either don’t know how to effectively tell their managers or are too afraid to do so. One of the most valuable functions a quality professional has is to "tell the emperor he is naked." A company can’t get better (or know what is important to work on) without an accurate picture of what’s happening. Therefore, it is essential to have a clear understanding of internal and external business practices, etc., via application of assessments done accurately and without bias. Jim L. Smith is an ASQ Fellow, former examiner for the Illinois Performance Excellence Program (a member of the Alliance for Performance Excellence, a network of Baldrige-based programs), and president of Jim Smith Quality. What are your insights into why an organization should consider the Baldrige Criteria as a quality systems model?

Posted by Christine Schaefer A new case study offered by ASQ this summer describes ongoing improvements in a public school district that has seen growing poverty and decreased funding in recent years. The Iredell-Statesville Schools (I-SS), located in southwestern North Carolina, earned the Baldrige Award for systemwide excellence in 2008. With 21,231 students today, I-SS has maintained its strong focus on student achievement despite significant budget cuts that have eliminated more than 300 positions in recent years. For example, the case study notes that through educators’ analysis of data on student learning and improvements in instruction, an I-SS elementary school serving a very high-poverty population (90 percent of students receive subsidized school meals) boosted reading proficiency among first graders from a rate of 62 percent in 2011-2012 to a rate of 82 percent in 2013-2014. What’s more, the principal of the school reported that students in five of the site’s six grade levels were performing at or above the previous year’s proficiency levels by the midpoint of the 2013-2014 school year. I-SS has surmounted financial and other crushing challenges before. Its turnaround story in the years preceding its 2008 Baldrige Award (shared in Baldrige 20/20, pp. 68-72) showed the promise of the Baldrige Education Criteria for Performance Excellence to improve the performance of public school systems in good times or bad. Dr. Melanie Taylor, I-SS’s deputy superintendent of curriculum and instruction, authored the July 2014 ASQ case study. At the Baldrige Program’s Quest for Excellence® Conference in April 2014, Taylor presented on using the Baldrige management framework to improve the efficiency of district operations and the effectiveness of school instructional programs (see graphic below). For Taylor’s tips for other educational leaders who are new to the Baldrige approach to systemwide improvement, read the pre-conference interview. Courtesy of Iredell-Statesville Schools   Courtesy of Iredell-Statesville Schools      

Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon I have always been fascinated by new words. A few years ago Larry Potterfield, the Founder and CEO of Baldrige Award recipient MidwayUSA shared one of his "words": voluntold. Voluntold is helping people understand the wisdom of doing something that Larry thinks is good for the company (and them). Very recently I read a blog post by Gerry Sandusky (not the former Penn State coach) in which he used the term probortunity. Probortunity is the unity between problems and opportunity, i.e. looking at ways to turn problems into opportunities. So with the folks at Merriam-Webster probably looking askance at me, let me propose stratovation, the important unification of strategy and innovation. You might first say, "Aren’t they the same?" The answer to that question is clearly "no." But should there be greater unity between them? I believe the answer is clearly "yes." Let’s look at the differences between these concepts and why the need for greater commingling of the two. Not all strategy is innovative and not all innovations are strategic. According to the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, strategy is about your organization’s approach to the future. Strategy might be built around new partnerships, revenue growth, divestitures, and new products or core competencies. Innovation involves adopting an idea, process, technology, product, or business model that is either new or new to its proposed application. Good strategy should be about clarity in direction; it is marching orders for the organization. Good innovation is about possibility; efforts are full of uncertainty and a significant number are likely to fail. Detecting failures early is the key so that resources can be re-prioritized. As pointed out in a DigitalTonto blog, strategy is a logic chain that results in one set of choices rather than another. Innovation is about experimentation, multiple choices, and trying things out. Without strategy you lack direction. Without innovation you risk losing relevance as an organization. So where does stratovation fit in? As product and technology cycles are becoming increasingly shorter, it is important to have ongoing innovation efforts to feed organizational strategy. Both successes and failures in innovation efforts can feed strategy and help in setting clear direction. Organizations need a focused stratovation process, a mechanism for encouraging innovation and making sure outcomes of innovation efforts are hardwired to the strategic planning and thinking of the organization. Senior leaders need to set the climate for innovation and make sure there is the hardwired linkage to strategy setting. All workforce members are possible contributors to innovation. Senior leaders need to prioritize resources so that high potential innovations have the resources needed for exploration. It takes a proactive focus on stratovation for ongoing organizational success. So, how is your organization set for stratovation?  

Posted by Christine Schaefer When Freese and Nichols Inc. won the Baldrige Award in 2010, the Texas-based small business boasted a strong ability to build long-term relationships with its employees. The 120-year-old engineering and architecture firm has averaged below-industry turnover rates for more than ten years. Today the company counts more than 525 experienced professionals, technical experts, and support personnel working from 14 offices in Texas and North Carolina. Its systematic approach to providing robust opportunities for employees’ professional development includes career ladders for every discipline. The approach also provides for individual performance and short- and longer-term career development goals for every employee. Courtesy of Freese and Nichols Inc. Used with permission. All practices are embedded in a companywide culture that is both family-oriented and innovation-oriented. The strong workforce focus has yielded consistently high satisfaction and engagement levels on employee surveys. It has also garnered outside recognition for the firm’s industry-best results in recent years. Cindy Milrany, chief financial officer and chief administrative officer, recently shared these key reasons why Freese and Nichols values and cultivates long-term employee relationships: They enable the firm to retain organizational knowledge. They enhance the firm’s ability to maintain long‐term relationships with clients. They make it possible to minimize recruiting and training costs. They maintain the company’s culture as the firm grows. "I urge other small businesses to learn the value of using the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence," said Milrany. "Freese and Nichols uses the framework to focus improvements needed to drive our vision ‘to be the firm of choice for clients and employees.’" Those who attend the Baldrige Regional Conference in Los Angeles on September 8 and 9 will gain the opportunity to learn more about Freese and Nichols’ approaches to retaining employees. Milrany will present a morning session September 9 on maintaining long-term employee relationships; she will also facilitate a preconference workshop on September 8. Download the full schedule (PDF) of presentations and register soon.

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey What are the elements of a culture of quality according to executives and managers, both in the United States and around the world? And how does your organization’s culture stack up? ASQ recently teamed up with Forbes Insights on the free paper, "Culture of Quality: Accelerating Growth and Performance in the Enterprise," surveying 2,291 senior executives and quality professionals on their perspectives of what goes into such a culture and how to maintain it. "[An organization's] true effectiveness requires an accompanying commitment to various cultural elements such as leadership, a compelling vision, companywide shared values, pervasive behaviors, and complementary performance metrics and incentives. It is only when an organization exhibits these and related components that it can be said to exhibit a true culture of quality," according to the white paper. A "Culture of Quality" contains lots of insightful data from the surveyed leaders; for example, Only 60% say their management supports the quality vision and values unequivocally. Overall, only 47% of respondents say their leaders lead by example or otherwise "live" the values, and only 50% say support for the company’s quality vision is apparent among middle management. Only 24% overall strongly agree that they actively involve customers in formal quality discussions. Only 12% overall strongly agree that they use social media to gauge customer sentiment. 53% plan to increase investment in quality programs over the next 18 months—with 17% describing the increase as substantial. According to the paper, "Key drivers behind [an investment in a quality program] include quality’s positive impact on effectiveness and profitability, quality’s ability to serve as a key competitive differentiator and the view that high quality represents a barrier to entry to competitors. Quality is also viewed as a vital tool in risk management and the drive for innovation." The white paper presents mini-case studies on companies such as Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Samsung, Fed-Ex, and Tata. Tata Quality Management Services, a division of the holding company, Tata Sons, promotes business excellence, ethics, innovation, and related quality objectives in all businesses of the Tata Group. "In the early ‘90s, when India was transitioning from a closed to an open economy . . . Tata realized that if we wanted to remain competitive in a more open and global environment where markets exist seamlessly, we would need to transform our products, services and mindsets. So we evaluated various frameworks before deciding to adopt the Baldrige Criteria," said Sunil Sinha, resident director, Middle East and North Africa Region, Tata Sons. "The Baldrige Model’s introspection-based approach, which seeks to provide insights ahead of solutions, suited the federal nature of the group. Further, [the Baldrige approach’s] ability to customize itself to hundreds of variations in business models was a big advantage. So from then on, it was our role to help advise Tata companies on how to improve, based on their business imperatives and the provisions of the excellence framework." Intel uses an internal team award-the Intel Quality Award (IQA)-to motivate employees to pursue continuous improvement, innovate, and grow in Intel’s core values. To prepare for the award, Intel employees conduct self-assessments, using the Baldrige Criteria scoring ranges. Baldrige Award recipient Fed-Ex uses voice of the customer data as the foundation of its culture of quality. "Our customers have high expectations, and we firmly believe that our quality standards are not set by us, they are determined by our customers. . . . Customer experience metrics drive continuous improvement all the time. We use voice of the customer data and analytics to home in on our opportunities and drive our innovations and improvements," said Rebecca Yeung, managing director, service experience leadership. The white paper concludes with a "handful of readily discernible components" of a culture of quality; for example, Clearly visible, engaged, and unwavering senior management support for quality initiatives Clearly articulated vision and values Active and ongoing engagement with customers to continually identify and address current and evolving needs Clearly stated quality goals Performance expectations for all individuals throughout the company that clearly link to quality goals Appropriate incentives—which can favor monetary or recognition-based awards, depending on individual circumstances The full paper "The Culture of Quality: Accelerating Growth and Performance in the Enterprise" can be downloaded free of charge. How can your organization gain and sustain a culture of quality?

Posted by Christine Schaefer In 2009, a federal government organization that supports multicenter clinical trials for the benefit of American military veterans received the prestigious national Baldrige Award. The Veterans Affairs Cooperative Studies Program Clinical Research Pharmacy Coordinating Center (Center) distinguished itself for high productivity and for maintaining strong customer (investigator) relationships. For example, the Center’s 2008 productivity level of $221,000 per full-time employee compared favorably to eight top competitors (i.e. the highest competitor’s performance was approximately $195,000).  The Center has maintained 75 percent of its customers for greater than 10 years, generating repeat business that raised the organization’s extramural funding (the leveraged portion generated outside Congressional appropriations) to a level of $11 million in 2008 demonstrating true customer engagement. The Center continues to focus on delivering exceptional service to its customers (investigators). Its 100+ employees support clinical trials across multiple clinical study sites by providing pharmaceutical expertise, project management, safety monitoring, regulatory oversight, and manufacturing and distribution services. The Cooperative Studies Program encompasses five coordinating centers, the pharmacy center, three epidemiology centers, and a genomics center. Initially, the Center utilized the Baldrige framework for performance excellence, and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9001 Quality Management System standards as the foundation of continuous improvement. In 2004 the Center became the first ISO 9001-registered VA facility. "The interlinking of Baldrige and ISO began many years ago when we asked ourselves how best to provide quality services for investigators and veterans, but over time we pondered if our performance measures were telling us enough and whether something was missing in our ISO-defined management review," said Julia E. Vertrees, associate center director of quality assurance. "Today, using the concept of a Total Integrated Performance Excellence System (TIPES), the Center is working towards a deeper integration and interlinking of our quality tools with the Baldrige framework key to building a holistic management approach." VACSP Total Integrated Performance Excellence System; image used with permission. Jan Hickey, chief of clinical manufacturing, noted that when the recession hit several years ago, decreased federal funding "slashed travel and training dollars." Yet she called the organization’s use of the Baldrige performance-excellence principles and ISO a "lifeline for us." Vertrees added, "The TIPES supports an organizational culture and processes that can achieve and sustain high performance levels in good times or bad." Attend the Baldrige Regional Conference in Los Angeles on September 8 and 9 to learn more about the VA Center’s Baldrige journey and integrated management system. Vertrees and Hickey will present a morning session September 9. Download the full schedule (PDF) of presentations and register soon.  

Posted by Christine Schaefer Fourteen years ago, the University of Wisconsin-Stout became the first (and to date, only) four-year university to receive the nation’s Baldrige Award. Using the Education Criteria for Performance Excellence as a framework to build and align processes, the organization  distinguished itself in part for its "Mission Driven, Market Smart" focus on educational programs supporting students’ future careers in industry and education. As a result of such offerings and excellence in other areas too, 99 percent of employers surveyed rated UW-Stout graduates as well-prepared, the job placement rate for graduates was at or above 98 percent for the five years leading to UW-Stout’s Baldrige Award, and about 90 percent of alumni said they would attend the university again. Since 2001, the university has been engaging the entire campus in the continued focus on performance excellence, according to Kay Schnur, director of enterprise information systems, and Kristi Krimpelbein, special assistant to the chancellor. "Baldrige has become part of our culture," said Schnur. "We ask for input from everyone, use it, and celebrate what it allows us to achieve." As an example of Baldrige Criteria-based practices, Schnur and Krimpelbein cited the university’s Strategic Planning Group. With approximately 35 members today, the group includes senior leaders and governance representatives. UW-Stout Strategic Planning Group; photo used with permission. Together they are responsible for identifying action items that will ensure the successful completion of the strategic plan. Since changes were made to the planning process years ago, the action items are fewer in number but higher in impact. "During annual ‘You Said, We Did’ sessions held each January, we share actions taken based on feedback," said Krimpelbein. "More than half of the workforce has attended these engagement-building sessions, which are held each January. We also celebrate accomplishments and recognize the individuals, teams, and groups behind them." Attend the Baldrige Regional Conference in Minneapolis on September 22 and 23 to learn more about the University of Wisconsin-Stout’s Baldrige journey and approaches to engage employees in performance excellence. Schnur and Krimpelbein will present an afternoon session September 23. Download the full schedule (PDF) of presentations and register soon.

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey Small businesses in the Commonwealth of Virginia are being introduced to the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence with results so successful that the Governor, the  Secretary of Commerce and Trade, and the U.S. Small Business Administration, among other state and federal organizations, are taking notice. Results for the small businesses have included job creation, growth and sustainability, and changes in leaders’ mindsets around lifelong learning. One to Watch participant small business: Aromas Specialty Coffee & Gourmet Bakery, Williamsburg and Newport News, VA The Ones to Watch (formerly called 12 to Watch) is an initiative of the United States Senate Productivity and Quality Award (SPQA) for Virginia and Washington, D.C., a Baldrige-based program that is part of the Alliance for Performance Excellence. The initiative is aimed at providing ongoing mentoring, technical assistance, and training on how to use the Baldrige Criteria framework as a management tool for state small businesses that meet certain eligibility criteria. According to SPQA staff, Virginia Secretary of Commerce and Trade Maurice Jones supported and guided the initiative, adding an emphasis on ongoing mentoring by SPQA board members for the small businesses on how to create jobs, be sustainable, and expand. The original 12 to Watch program was created in 2011. SPQA volunteer staff and board members wanted to find a way to help the economy of the Commonwealth of Virginia become stronger, especially during the turbulent times at the beginning of this decade. Their focus turned to small businesses, and they used their passion for the Baldrige Criteria—which represented a form of national service for many—to help mentor these small businesses and leverage partnerships with other Commonwealth organizations interested in job creation. The small businesses that took advantage of the initiative varied from start-ups to tech firms to government contractors. Donna Douglas, SPQA vice chair for strategy, said mentors were able to do a crosswalk between the Baldrige Criteria and other certification programs (e.g., CMMI, ISO 9000) for these small businesses to show what the certification could do for their business and what the Baldrige Criteria could do. "Until they got engaged with Baldrige, many of those small businesses that had been focused on the more specialized certifications were unaware that they had an opportunity to take a holistic approach for growing their organizations and understanding continuous quality and productivity improvement," she said, adding that one of the greatest opportunities for these small businesses was using the Baldrige Criteria to look beyond tactical planning to consider strategic planning. One to Watch participant small business: SteelMaster Building Systems, Virginia Beach, VA "With no exceptions, the opportunity to use the Baldrige Criteria as a strategic plan was something that each one of those small businesses embraced," said Janice Garfield, SPQA board chair and a program mentor. "Very few of them had a strategic plan. They had a business plan, but they did not have a strategic plan that was holistic and showed them how to measure what was relevant and important in terms of what they wanted to do. In every instance, helping organizations plan and align key performance measures with what they were all about and where they wanted to go was what our mentors and application of the Baldrige Criteria brought to those small businesses." Garfield added that small businesses "were voracious in their appetites for the kind of mentoring that we were providing." Garfield added that an unintended consequence of the program that SPQA staff heard over and over was a change in leaders’ mindsets. One small business president said "a key learning for him was that he’d been managing his business instead of leading it." One leader has now built a lifelong learning program into his business so that workforce members can continue their professional education while they work for him. Garfield said the leader realized he wanted to align the business with his vision "in a way he might not have done if he didn’t participate in the program. He learned that creating an environment for lifelong personal and organizational learning was part of his goal." The new and improved Ones to Watch initiative, to begin in 2015, is being unveiled at the Virginia Forum for Excellence, September 15-16, 2014, in Richmond. Douglas said the SPQA is especially excited about this next iteration because of the support from the Virginia secretary for commerce and trade who assigned Syd Dorsey, Virginia advisor for small business equity and development, to collaborate with the SPQA on an executive council to further strengthen partnerships throughout the state. Douglas completed an SPQA Discovery application (a state-level application that offers an entry point to a full Baldrige Criteria application by focusing on Criteria requirements at the overall level) for her own organization because the organization "needed a starting point," she said. "The beauty of the Baldrige Criteria and [the SPQA] Discovery application . . . [is to] get people to start thinking about the interrelationships between each component [of their operations], starting with leadership and looking from the leader perspective to results and then the processes in between. . . . The beauty of Baldrige is that once you start looking at the Criteria and get beyond the complexity, you understand that embracing the Criteria [framework] allows you [flexibility] because you are monitoring your progress as you go along. . . . Say, for example, that your revenue is not coming in as anticipated, the Baldrige Criteria give you the mechanics and skills that you need to look elsewhere in the organization or tweak areas where you are weak." In her former local county government position, Douglas said, "The Baldrige Criteria sustained us through some tough times. Data collection is big, and if you’re not collecting data quickly and analyzing and making needed changes, then you are dead in the water. I am a believer [in the Baldrige Criteria. They] help through thin times and fat times as well. . . . They begin to help you laser focus on the meaning of workforce engagement, leadership, results, and infrastructure." When people get into the Criteria, she added, they start thinking not just about individual projects, but also about how to grow revenue. The Ones to Watch small businesses in Virginia are all still in business—thanks in part to the mentoring, training, and partnerships offered and built through SPQA volunteers in the Commonwealth who believed in the value of small businesses for the economy and what was possible with the Baldrige Criteria.

Posted by Christine Schaefer Since earning a Baldrige Award in 2005, Bronson Methodist Hospital has nearly doubled in size. Today, the Kalamazoo, Michigan-based health care provider is part of the Bronson Healthcare system serving patients in nine counties in the southwest region of the state. According to Sue Reinoehl, the system’s senior vice president of strategy and communication, such growth "makes it challenging to ensure that we are delivering the same high-quality patient experience across our system." But she sees the Baldrige framework for performance excellence as an excellent tool to drive alignment. "We’re deploying our strategies across the system utilizing the Baldrige framework that helps us maintain our hallmark patient-centered focus. We’ve had this strategic discipline and cascade at our leadership and staff levels, and now we are applying the same discipline to our board processes," Reinoehl said. Image used with permission. "We have been working over the past three years on formalizing performance improvement for governance built on benchmarking, cycles of improvement, and the strategic plan for the system. We call it, appropriately, the Governance Performance Process." According to Reinoehl, the annual process includes review of the strategic plan and what changes the board might need to make to better support the plan. It also includes a self-evaluation of board effectiveness and best practices. This information culminates at a board retreat, where opportunities for improvement and recommendations are identified, resulting in board goals and future education topics. Reinoehl shared that this process has resulted in important improvements. For example, it revealed a need for a change in the governance board’s bylaws that did not allow employees to serve on the board. Like many hospitals, Bronson was employing more physicians (as opposed to working with independently employed physicians as partners) and needed a more contemporary policy regarding physicians serving on the board. This discussion raised additional questions about independence, committee chairs, and conflicts of interest. The Governance Performance Process provided clarity and resulted in welcoming employed physicians on the board. Reinoehl first got involved with Baldrige when Bronson Methodist Hospital (PDF) was preparing to apply for the Baldrige Award about ten years ago. Initially, "I pretty much got dragged into it," she joked. But she added that she soon became convinced of the opportunity that a better aligned and deployed strategic planning process could have on the organization’s outcomes. "Through the Baldrige framework, we developed discrete processes and formalized deployment so we could cascade the strategies throughout the organization; we call it our ‘Strategic Management Model,’" she said. "As a result, we achieved a common understanding of the vision and direction and how everything could help support it. And that generated better outcomes." Reinoehl was selected as a national Baldrige examiner in 2007. In the years following her organization’s Baldrige Award, she has continued to educate others about use of the Baldrige framework by her organization. "I am surprised how many hospitals still contact us to discuss how Baldrige has helped us. It’s great to continue to learn what others are doing," she said. "Baldrige is about having formal, systematic cycles of improvement," she said. "It’s something you just live as an organization. And since Baldrige is all about continuous improvement, it never stops." Given that perspective, her organization is now focused on future improvements. "We’re now designing a new leadership system that’s based on what we call Evidence-Driven Improvement. It integrates Lean and Baldrige and other improvement tools," she said. "It will be key in building our leadership competencies for the future." Attend the Baldrige Regional Conference in Minneapolis on September 23 to learn more about how Bronson Healthcare uses the Baldrige framework to improve board performance and that of the entire system. Reinoehl will present a morning session September 23. Download the full schedule (PDF) of presentations and register soon.

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey ASQ recently published an article in Quality Progress with a sidebar that outlined five benefits of using the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. According to ASQ author Megan Schmidt, the Baldrige Criteria framework 1. Promotes organizational culture transformation For example, according to Stoner, Inc., the Baldrige discipline teaches an organization about process, systems, teamwork, and measurements. 2013 Baldrige Award winner Sutter Davis Hospital said the reward of using the Criteria is what its leaders are learning about connecting with employees’ belief systems, establishing a framework for continuous improvement, and ensuring that every patient is embraced by a culture of caring. Despite the economic recession, Freese and Nichols has maintained a client-focused culture. It began its Baldrige journey toward excellence in 1996 and now provides Baldrige-based consulting to its own clients to help them improve the way they run their businesses. 2. Complements  approaches such as Lean and Six Sigma For example, a professor at the College of Business at Loyola University in New Orleans said he values ISO as a "first step" toward a systems perspective but favors the Baldrige Criteria for their "holistic, systems-based business model that builds alignment across the organization. . . . 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." In "The ‘Skinny’ on Baldrige versus Lean," Baldrige Director Bob Fangmeyer directs readers to experts discussing how the Baldrige Criteria help organizations optimize their entire systems rather than "’merely’ streamlining key processes and eliminating rework." As another example, according to Bronson Methodist Hospital, the Criteria framework was very helpful as a blueprint during a recent acquisition of another hospital, providing a framework for designing a new health care system. 3. Sets the bar higher For example, according to the Tata group, which licenses the Criteria for its Tata Business Excellence Model, its holding companies have become more competitive, customer-oriented, and process-focused. Baldrige Executive Fellows have found inspiration in cross-sector learning and sharing based on the Baldrige model that has led to, for example, better customer engagement, better supplier management, and increased productivity. Since its Baldrige Award win, MidwayUSA has seen unprecedented growth. The small business not only continues to improve customer and employee satisfaction scores but is now facilitating a Baldrige Performance Excellence Group, inviting community organizations from hospitals, to schools, to other businesses to attend presentations on using the Baldrige Criteria for improvement. 4. Is customizable 2013 Baldrige Award recipient Pewaukee School District said the used the Baldrige framework to improve the efficiency of district operations and the effectiveness of school instructional programs-even during times of budget cuts.  

Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon I am of course talking about feedback; you needn’t admit that you were thinking a different word. Soon the first set of feedback reports will be sent to 2014 Baldrige Award applicants. So, I thought this might be a good time to reflect on Baldrige feedback and feedback in general. I have always viewed feedback, properly delivered and properly received, as a gift. Nevertheless, we must recognize that feedback, even to a group or organization, is taken personally. Properly delivered therefore means with care, recognizing that no matter how accurate or well-documented, we see constructive feedback first as failures on our part. The key is to see it as opportunity. That means being prepared to receive the feedback and knowing that no person or organization is perfect, including you and me. So, the attitude of the recipient should be, I will try to understand the opportunity that is being presented to me. As deliverers of feedback we should use constructive (positive), not destructive language, recognize that human emotions will be involved, and not forget to mention strengths as well as opportunities. Furthermore, we should put ourselves in the position of the receiver in reviewing the feedback that will be given. How would I like it worded if I were the recipient? For some insights on personal feedback, see a recent "F" word column in Government Executive. Let me share some thoughts on organizational feedback, like a Baldrige feedback report. As with personal feedback, prepare yourself for a constructive summary of strengths and opportunities for improvement (OFIs). Don’t ignore the strengths and jump right to the OFIs. The strengths are worth enjoying, celebrating, and building on. Recognize that an outside group of people with limited knowledge of your organization prepared the feedback report. They don’t know the organization as well as you. The feedback will not be 100% accurate, because there is information they probably did not have that you have. Don’t use the inaccurate information as an excuse to ignore valuable insights that either confirm what you knew or have identified a blind spot. Lay down the feedback report after the initial read to allow for the emotional reaction to subside. Pick it up again in 24 hours and do a systematic review of the suggestions: Which strengths give us a competitive advantage that we should further build and use to our benefit? Which opportunities for improvement will give us the greatest benefit, if addressed? Choose a handful of the recommendations and establish action teams. Look for short- and longer-term opportunities. As the senior leader give these teams your personal attention and the resources they need. Be open and transparent in sharing information. Learn to love the "F" word. It is a gift!

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey In June 2012, Professor Ron Schulingkamp’s MBA students at Loyola New Orleans College of Business had a noble goal: help reduce the euthanasia rate in their parish animal shelter. Happy adopters (and adoptee) at the Jefferson Parish Animal Shelter To accomplish that goal, the students introduced the Jefferson Parish Animal Shelter (JPAS) to the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. Working with shelter staff, the students designed a month-long pilot to improve the process of selecting homeless dogs for euthanasia, finding caring homes for 60 dogs who otherwise would have been put to sleep. The overall result of the pilot: a 30% reduction in the euthanasia rate and a 45% increase in adoptions. According to shelter director Robin Beaulieu, the Lean Six Sigma project was an introduction to the Baldrige Criteria, which provided "the overall framework and mental model that focused on systematic performance improvement and alignment of all of the activities." The pilot was the shelter leadership team’s first introduction to the Baldrige Criteria and "the knowledge required to understand and ‘operationalize’ the Criteria, including Lean Six Sigma, process management, and project management," she said. The pilot has provided the baseline for improvement efforts ever since. Adopters at the Jefferson Parish Animal Shelter The MBA students taught the shelter about alignment and integration of processes and the basics of Lean, said Beaulieu. The Lean "5S" concepts were applied to reducing the time for potential adopters to select their new family members, from one hour to 15-20 minutes. This cycle time reduction was the result of the shelter director’s identification of a major "adoption bottleneck" that related to the animal selection process. To eliminate, or at least reduce, the bottleneck, the shelter developed a process with the help of volunteers to profile shelter pets on the Jefferson Parish SPCA Facebook website, so that by the time an adopter comes to the shelter, he/she has an idea of a potential match. At this point, the shelter ensures that the pet is a good match for the forever home to reduce returns. The shelter has also improved how supplies are organized (set in order) and the cleanliness of the kennels (shine). JPAS operates two animal shelters in Jefferson and Marrero, LA. The shelters hold lost animals for owners to reclaim, adopt out homeless animals to new owners, and quarantine dogs and cats that have bitten. In addition, the shelter investigates complaints of cruelty or neglect of animals. The shelters accepts all animals turned over to them. Adopter at the Jefferson Parish Animal Shelter Beaulieu said the shelter is at the "beginning stage" of using the Baldrige Criteria, but the Criteria have assisted shelter staff in saving animals’ lives. "The Baldrige Criteria have provided a foundation to build a sense of purpose and method of questioning ourselves and reflecting on how to improve our performance and save lives," she said. "Every day is a struggle and we [dedicated staff and volunteers] feel for each animal that comes through our doors. As a municipal shelter, we are challenged and are a reflection of the community. We are never satisfied with our performance, but we are systematically improving, and the numbers have shown how much we have improved." As an example of those numbers, in 2010, JPAS accepted 12,744 animals; in 2013, the total was 11,222. Although there is little difference in intake, Beaulieu said the shelter’s two key measures—euthanize and adoption rates—have significantly improved from 2010 to 2013: euthanasia reduced by 67% (8,077 to 5,433) and adoptions increased by 75% (1,661 to 2,224). Adopters at the Jefferson Parish Animal Shelter This decrease in euthanasia is in line with JPAS’s goals to no longer have to euthanize animals for reasons other than aggression or medical problems where the animal cannot be treated or rehabilitated. The euthanasia rate is directly related to JPAS intake. Intake numbers have stabilized and have slightly decreased as a result of a partnership with the local SPCA to provide low-cost spay and neuter programs to reduce the number of strays. JPAS and the SPCA use intake data by zip code to target locations for low- or no-cost spay and neuter and vaccination promotions, as well as trap and release programs. JPAS also uses intake data to justify continued funding for the spay/neuter partnership. These data are monitored on a quarterly and annual basis, with long-term trends tracked on control charts. JPAS also uses data to show the Jefferson Parish Council that the shelter will not be negatively impacted financially by holding reduced cost adoption promotions and reducing the number of animals in the shelter through increased adoptions. Adopter at the Jefferson Parish Animal Shelter Future Loyola MBA classes have assisted the shelter in maintaining these results and completing a Louisiana Quality Foundation application. To complete the application, the  shelter referenced the Baldrige Criteria to outline some key information to guide its processes. The MBA students identified the underlying focus of the shelter’s purpose, vision, mission, and values (PVMV): to improve the community and end the suffering of animals. Following the Criteria’s spirit of alignment across the organization, according to JPAS’s shared application, "the PVMV ensures the creation of strategies, systems, and methods for achieving excellence, stimulating creativity and innovation, and building trust in the community." And according to Beaulieu, thanks to the Criteria, "the staff now has a mission, not just as a government job with a paycheck. Instead of waiting to be told what to do, the staff has authority defined by the PVMV. The Criteria are being used to help us create the systems and processes and focus on the future." Have you considered volunteering at your local animal shelter and collaborating with staff on process improvements from the Criteria? —- JPAS Culture Statements (PVMV) Purpose: To Inspire and Engage the Community to End Animal Suffering Vision: We envision a community where all people demonstrate compassion and respect toward animals and where all companion animals have loving homes. Mission: The mission is to improve the community through the practice of compassion by saving and protecting animals, providing care and treatment through education advocate for their welfare and to enhance the human-animal bond. Values: Compassion for all animal life Respect for the intrinsic value of animals Belief in the right of animals to be free from cruelty, neglect, and abuse Teamwork: Our success depends on all of our efforts. Integrity: We keep our promises and honor our commitments. Humility: We are human, and we are therefore fallible. We highly value your help.  

Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon Intuition would say (at least to me) that I should read, listen, question, and maybe read or listen again to learn. So, I was caught by surprise when I recently read a Washington Post article by Barry Ritholtz in which he said, "Writing is a good way to figure out what you think." It suddenly dawned on me that I do the same. When I am trying to assimilate a significant amount of information on a topic I read a lot and then I write. The act of writing forces me to sift through the information, evaluate conflicting input, and form an opinion or translate the information for my intended use. Daniel Boorstin, the former librarian of Congress had an interesting take on the topic. He said, "I write to discover what I think….After all, the bars aren’t open that early." In the past as Director of the Baldrige Program, I was well-known for "I mow, therefore I think." I found that riding my tractor around the yard to mow gave me unencumbered time (with the deer) to think about what I had recently read, and also been pondering, to begin formulating ideas to put on paper. My colleagues were always leery of what ideas would come forward when I started a conversation with, "I mowed this weekend." But I digress from writing to think….. Having mowed and mulled, I frequently write an Insights on the Road to Performance Excellence column or a blog to organize my thoughts and to share what I have learned. If you look back at Insights columns you will see that the subjects of these columns in the spring and summer of even-numbered years are frequently topics that will be themes in upcoming Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence revisions. I am writing these pieces to organize my thoughts on where the changes will occur in the Criteria (Items, Notes, commentary) and to alert readers to changes I perceive in the "leading edge of validated management practice." Conversely, knowing that I plan on writing an Insights column forces me to have the disciplined thinking to make my thoughts coherent and convergent. Writing is truly an effective aid to thinking and organizing thoughts! How do you learn? Have you ever considered writing to learn? Do you already use this approach?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Christine Schaefer The following have been compiled from interviews of presenters at the Baldrige Program’s 26th Annual Quest for Excellence® conference. How to Use the Baldrige Criteria to Improve a School System: Talk with the staff involved: Help the staff to identify their priority areas for improvement, looking at the data you have to support that, and get them involved in identifying what the "big rocks" are. Sometimes it’s an easy win to get them involved in being part of the solution as well as identifying the problem. It’s not always what the leadership might see as a priority area; if workers see it as a major issue, then they tend to be more engaged in the improvement process and have more buy-in along the way. Use the Baldrige Criteria and the Baldrige processes without using all the Baldrige terminology. Using language that is familiar to the workers is less overwhelming. "Go slow to go fast": Keep a pulse on your staff to see where they are in the transition process through both formal check-in meetings and informal conversations. You need to have a combination of that hard and soft data to monitor. You need some folks to tell you what the reality is on how things are going. These tips are from Melanie Taylor, associate superintendent of curriculum and instruction of Iredell-Statesville Public Schools (2008 Baldrige Award recipient, education). Read the complete interview at http://nistbaldrige.blogs.govdelivery.com/2014/04/02/tight-education-funding-growing-student-needs-where-baldrige-is-essential/. How to Conduct an Organizational Self-Assessment: Use the "Are We Making Progress?" surveys as a starting point for using the Baldrige framework. These surveys—one for the senior leadership team and another for other employees (available for free download from the Baldrige Web site at http://www.nist.gov/baldrige/publications/progress.cfm—are based on the Organizational Profile questions in the Baldrige Criteria. Once the survey results are in, pull together a cross-functional team to analyze the results and discuss potential answers to the questions from the Organizational Profile. Conduct a gap analysis based on this work; it will likely provide several "jumping off points" for continuous improvement efforts in the organization. These tips are from Lisa Muller, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning at Jenks Public Schools (2005 Baldrige Award recipient, education). Read the complete interview at http://nistbaldrige.blogs.govdelivery.com/2014/03/25/value-of-the-organizational-profile-to-an-ever-changing-organization/. How to Implement a New Curriculum: Use a collaborative planning process to ensure that you are implementing the curriculum across your system systematically. Following are questions addressed by the school system at each step of the process: 1. Plan: What is the indicator or standard asking our students to do? What are the difficult points for teachers? Students? What are the connections to prior/future learning? How will the thinking and academic skills be addressed? 2. Do: What is acceptable evidence of proficiency with the indicator? What is the sequence of learning? How will we identify ways instruction can be adjusted to meet the needs of all learners? 3. Study: How will we know students are learning it? Review data points around multiple pathways. 4. Act: What do we do if they already know it? What do we do if they do not learn it? These tips are from Rose Ann Schwartz, staff development teacher, and LaVerne Kimball, associate superintendent, at Montgomery County Public Schools (2010 Baldrige Award recipient, education). Read the complete interview at http://nistbaldrige.blogs.govdelivery.com/2014/03/13/preparing-students-for-future-jobs-update-from-2010-baldrige-award-winner/. How to Create a Strategic Plan for a School District: Determine your values and goals (from mission) Conduct a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis and an environmental scan. Determine strategy areas and create action plans. Publish and share the strategic plan with all. Monitor and create accountability systems. This tips are from Brian Kammers, vice president of the board of education, and Marty Van Hulle, principal of Pewaukee High School, for the Pewaukee School District (2013 Baldrige Award recipient, education). Read the complete story at http://nistbaldrige.blogs.govdelivery.com/2014/04/22/from-blind-squirrels-looking-for-nuts-to-strategic-planners/. How to Systematically Measure Your Organization’s Performance: Design a system for your performance measurement and improvement that is repeatable and sustainable (Approach). Involve all key groups in development of your performance measurement and improvement system and share the results widely (Deploy). Make calm, clear-headed decisions based on the data analysis and regularly evaluate the effectiveness of the performance measurement process itself (Learn). Align your performance measurement system with your organization’s mission, vision, values, and key work processes (Integrate). These tips are from Fonda Vera, executive dean for planning, research, effectiveness, and development, and Bao Huynh, director of institutional effectiveness, at Richland Community College (2005 Baldrige Award recipient, education). Read the complete interview at http://nistbaldrige.blogs.govdelivery.com/2014/03/06/measuring-performance-best-practices-of-a-2005-baldrige-award-winner/. Editor’s Note: The first two blogs in this series feature tips from Baldrige Award-winning businesses and health care organizations, respectively, based on interviews of presenters at this year’s Quest for Excellence conference.

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