BLOGRIGE

Week 1 of Examiner Training is History!

Posted by Bob Hunt

Folks, I witnessed tremendous excitement this week as we concluded our first of four weeks of Baldrige National Examiner training.  Over 110 Examiners graduated and are now officially on our Board of Examiners and ready to begin their critical work evaluating Baldrige Award applications.

While the goal of enabling Examiners to produce high quality, value-added feedback for our Award applicants to help them improve their performance has not changed this year, the emphasis and approach has.  We have returned to a theme of being "brilliant at the basics." This means enhancing Examiners' skill in analyzing Award applications and writing excellent feedback. The classes this year were more about practicing those skills, interacting with one another, and helping one another to improve.  Facilitators stopped lecturing and took on more coaching responsibilities. The reaction so far has been extremely positive. Our Senior and Alumni Examiners have commented that they enjoy the role of coaching and mentoring our newer Examiners. And our newer Examiners, while certainly still  "drinking from a firehose," are drinking from a smaller hose with more helping hands to manage and control the water flow. As a result, they feel more confident as they depart, ready to begin their work helping organizations to improve.

All in all, a terrific start to 2010 Baldrige Examiner Training!

What CEOs Really Think About Social Media

Posted by Zara Brunner

2,700 CEO subscribers to SmartBrief on Leadership (you can register for free) participated in a recent survey on how their companies are involved in social media and what their perceptions are.  Here are some of the data:

• 75% indicate they were knowledgeable or actively learning about social media 
• 51% say their companies are actively using and exploring social media, with another 30% piloting or considering social media
• 83% recognize that social media is a way to learn what customers are saying about them
• 40% think they are behind their competition in using social media

All this paints the picture that social media is growing in use and will continue to do so, and that leadership is supportive.  Social media provides a new, and probably important, way to listen to your customers and other stakeholders, engage with them, raise awareness, and build relationships. Several Baldrige Award recipients are using social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, blogs, Flikr, and YouTube in various ways to do just that.  Examples, just to name a few, include: Monfort Institute's Sustainable Transformation blog, Sharp HealthCare's Twitter feed and Facebook page, SSM Health Care's Twitter feed, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company's YouTube channel, and Poudre Valley Health System's Visionary Healthcare blog.  It's no wonder then, that at the closing of the Quest for Excellence Conference two weeks ago, Baldrige Director (and Cheermudgeon) Harry Hertz, hinted at Web 2.0 in the next version of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence.  Social media and customer engagement go hand-in-hand.

Read the rest of the CEO SmartBrief survey responses here.  Let us know your thoughts on social media and how your organizaiton is using or plans to use these new tools. 

BNQP Recognized as a Best Leadership Development Program

Posted by Pamela Wong

As we get ready to kick off the first week of 2010 Examiner training, which begins tomorrow, it came to my attention that, for the third year in a row, the Baldrige National Quality Award Program (BNQP) has been honored as one of the best leadership development programs in the United States by Leadership Excellence magazine.

BNQP is named in the government/military category, which recognizes 15 programs. We’re among good company: some of our cohonorees include the Defense Acquisition University; the U.S. Marine, Air Force, Army, and Naval academies; NASA/Leadership Alchemy; and the National Defense University.

According to Leadership Excellence, the magazine based the selection on seven criteria: 

1. vision/mission
2. involvement and participation
3. measurement and accountability 
4. design, content, and curriculum 
5. presenters, presentations, and delivery 
6. take-home value 
7. outreach, outcomes

We appreciate the recognition by Leadership Excellence, which was founded in 1984 by Ken Shelton, Stephen R. Covey, Ken Blanchard, and Charles Garfield to “redefine how businesses were conducted, how people were motivated, and how success was achieved.” Ken Shelton has served as editor of the monthly publication since then.

Check out Leadership Excellence here.

Business Schools' Great Ethics Debate

Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon

Business Schools’ Great Ethics Debate is the title of an article in the most recent issue of US News and World Report. How can this possibly be a topic for debate? The article states a key criticism  that business school professors overwhelmingly focus on short-term profits rather than long-term consequences of business decisions.  But realizing that they are now under the microscope, the story goes on to say, business schools are re-evaluating the importance ethics and exploring different methods of incorporating them into the M.B.A. curriculum.

While this is admirable, I have a more fundamental question. Why weren’t  ethics part of the family upbringing of every M.B.A. student long before they reached graduate school? I keep thinking of the story a few years ago about a girl who wrote the winning essay to receive free tickets to a Miley Cyrus concert. She told her hard luck story of losing her father who was killed in Iraq. It was all fabrication! When her mother was asked about the essay, the mother said “We did whatever we could do to win.”

And we complain about the business ethics of companies in economically developing countries?

But all is not bleak; in the most recent (2009) National Business Ethics Survey, conducted by the nonprofit Ethics Resource Center, employees report a decline in ethical violations by their organizations. However, the level of believed misconduct is still at 49% and the study’s authors believe this move to increased ethical behavior could be a temporary consequence of the recession. Let’s hope they are wrong and it is the harbinger of a return to high performance, achieved with ethical business practices.

One thing I know is that Baldrige Award recipients ascribe to high ethical standards. “Social Responsibility” is a Baldrige core value and the Baldrige Criteria Leadership Category places great emphasis on ethics from the senior leaders through to the whole organization. Mike Sather, Director of the VA Cooperative Studies Program Clinical Research Pharmacy Coordinating Center, a 2009 Baldrige Award recipient, speaks eloquently about the Code of the West and the cowboy ethics adopted by his Center. It is based on ten simple principles for you and your organization to live by: from Live Each Day with Courage..to..Know Where to Draw the Line, and always Ride for the Brand. If you can’t be proud of and defend the Brand you are riding for, one of you has a fundamental problem.

Do you have an opinion on how we bring ethics into the family, schools, and workplace? Do you have any stories of role model practices? Check out what the Baldrige Award recipients do.

Ode (Owed) to Small Business

Posted by Jean Smith

I have been reading the blogs and watching the videos from last week’s Quest for Excellence conference and must say that I am very impressed with the workshop content.  It would be invaluable for small firms to hear the speakers and their approaches for achieving sustainable performance excellence. Unfortunately, many small businesses don’t know about the Baldrige Program and the Criteria for Performance Excellence, or are unaware of the benefits to small businesses of utilizing the criteria to improve organizational performance.  Why?

The Baldrige National Quality Program has asked me to work with them on the answers to these and other questions and to assist in finding solutions while working here on rotation from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA).  I have been here for several weeks now and one of the things that strikes me is the size of most small businesses (very small) versus the complexity of, or at least the perceived complexity of, the Baldrige Criteria.  Many of the companies assisted by the SBA have fewer than 25 employees, and it is rare for a small business to have the resources to take on anything that is not deemed to be absolutely essential.  Yet many small businesses have realized the value of applying the Baldrige principles and they are the first to tell you that Baldrige is not something you do on top of what you already do, it becomes the way you do what you do! The benefits were extolled by the speakers at last week’s Quest conference including small business recipient, MidwayUSA. Actually, when you look at the numbers, small businesses apparently do pretty well in the Baldrige process, with 19 out of the 84 total awards going to small businesses. Don’t just take my word for it, go here to see some testimonials and free resources available for small businesses.   

I would love to hear from small businesses about your experiences with the Baldrige Criteria, their effect on your company, or perhaps the obstacles you’ve experienced in trying to implement them.   We at the Baldrige program recognize the importance of small business to the U.S. economy and are open to hearing what you have to say about the performance and quality program issues that affect you and how we can help resolve them.

Are You Ready for the B Corp?

Posted by Jeff Lucas

On Tuesday, Maryland became the first state to formally establish the Benefit Corporation. Described by Business Week as a new corporate form . . . "that will let social entrepreneurs codify their missions in their corporate charters." The idea of the B Corp has been getting a lot of buzz lately (couldn't resist), but now we will get a chance to see how they will play out in reality.

The thinking is that this arrangement will give organizations with primarily socially focused missions a means of attracting and retaining sufficient capital to grow and increase their impact while remaining mission-driven. An example cited in Daniel Pink's book Drive is a North Carolina organization that is buying up abandoned furniture factories, retrofitting them with green technology, and then leasing them back to the struggling domestic furniture industry at low rates. While they hope to make a small profit, their overarching intent is to revitalize the economy of the region.

Pink raises the idea as part of his evidence for the impact that "Motivation 3.0" is going to have on work systems in the future (see my post here vis-a-vis Drive and K-12 education). It also aligns with a finding from IBM's Global CEO study from 2008 where they speculate that one of the elements of the enterprise of the future will be that corporations will have to become "Genuine, Not Just Generous" (BTW - an opportunity to benchmark your organization to the full range of elements is available here).  In particular, they point out that increasingly the emerging workforce, particularly Generation Y, is making career decisions based on their perception of the social responsiveness of an employer.

The trend also resonates with much of what we heard in the closing panel at Quest for Excellence XXII. The 2009 Baldrige Award Recipients in general, and our two health care recipients (AtlantiCare and Heartland Health) in particular, are developing programs in and allocating resources to areas that would typically have been left to pure social services organizations.  And they aren't doing it merely to bolster their score on Item 7.6, they are doing it because they see the interconnectedness of their mission, their work system, and the communities in which they operate. So, how long do you think it will be before we see one of these B Corps (or L3 - "low profit, limited liability" - the term that Pink prefers) on stage at Quest?   

Top Customer Engagement Lessons from the Best: Part 2

Posted by Zara Brunner

This is the second part of a post on customer engagement and some highlights and lessons learned during the Quest for Excellence conference (read the first post around customer engagement and listening).  Baldrige Award recipients and leading organizations from business, education, healthcare, and nonprofit shared their best practices based on the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. 

Leadership makes all the difference

This is what Baldrige and the CEO have done for MidwayUSA whose vision is "to be the best run business in America for the benefit of our customers."  The CEO maintains that leadership is the most important driver of customer satisfaction.  Read more about his leadership checklist.  Leadership development at all levels is also helping Heartland Health navigate the uncertainties posed by health care reform, and get the best value for their customers and community.  Horst Schulze wrote the book on this in my humble opinion.  He regaled us all with his story of starting a new company using Baldrige.  It's a luxury hotel that promises anything and everything as long as it's ethical, legal, and moral (see Harry Hertz's post for more background).  Horst speaks passionately about clarity of purpose for the organization, the direction it should go in, its mission, objectives and processes to make everything happen, customer loyalty and trust, and respecting and empowering employees who serve a purpose - not a function. 

Benchmark, benchmark, benchmark. 

What are your competitors doing?  Who's the best, what are they doing, how are they doing it?  Conduct research.  Go visit high-performing organizations.  Try and challenge your organization to do better in critical areas you're not doing so well in.  All Baldrige Award recipients repeat and practice this. 

Top Customer Engagement Lessons from the Best: Part 1 of 2

Posted by Zara Brunner

What does a school district, a Lexus dealer in Texas, a multi-national global enterprise, The Ritz-Carlton, a small, family-owned business, and hospitals and health systems have in common?  They all focus their operations on customers and customer engagement.  And they all just shared the secrets of their successes and best practices with those of us at the Quest for Excellence conference. 

Across the past two days we've picked up tip after tip from Baldrige Award recipients and other leading organizations.  Here are just a few of these customer excellence cultural and organizational  philosophies, practices and processes which they attribute to the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence:

• Satisfaction just isn't enough.  It's about engagement.  AtlantiCare "loves" their customers.  It's key to their engagement and Starfish culture (more on that and their Starfish Stories in the future).   Ritz-Carlton empowers each of it's 30,000 "ladies and gentlemen" (aka employees) to fully engage its customers.  And gives them up to $2,000 each to resolve any customer complaints on the spot.  These ladies and gentlemen are the brand and recognize the connection between customer loyalty and employee empowerment.  They have 10-15 minute "Line Ups" each day with all their ladies and gentlemen to go over their Gold Standards, thank staff for contributing Mr. BIVs (breakdowns, inefficiencies, and variations), and other customer-focused communications.  Chugach School District focuses on community engagement and allows its students to teach processes to the community.  This empowers students, gives them a sense of success, and helps accelerate their learning.  They strive to go beyond community buy-in to community ownership because the difference is when the community has a sense of ownership, they will help the school district problem-solve and serve as bigger champions. 

• Don't guess what your customers want.  Ask them.  Listening is key.  Voice of the Customer is captured through social media, focus groups, community and stakeholder advisory groups, research, tracking methods, etc.  Of course there are processes for all of these.  And data are segmented and analyzed and turned into action.  This is what AtlantiCare did when creating its Cancer Treatment Facility; the community and patients helped them design it.  AtlantiCare is now the market leader in preference share in oncology services.  They have 5 Bs and one of them is Best Customer Service: they want to have top decile performance across the organization.  They're achieving it in multiple service lines and units now.  West Paces Hotels, under Horst Schulze leadership, is focusing on the customer too.  They've done something no other hotel has done: they have no check-in or check-out times.  They let the customers tell them what they want and they build their products and services around them.  Bronson Methodist Hospital does this through an Advisory Panel for Patients and Families that meets monthly and offers a way to bring voice of the customer into their daily work.  In 2009, over 1500 hours of service were volunteered and they've seen an 84% engagement rate by the advisors in each meeting.  Park Place Lexus "wows" their customers with a listening and learning process that is tied to their CRM database.  This allows them to tailor their offerings to their customers preferences, habits, and hobbies. The Ritz-Carlton also uses their CRM database for everyone in the company to input information that can be used to tailor and improve guest experiences during visits to any of its hotels anywhere in the world.

Customer engagement can lead to organizational sustainability.  Excellent organizations become contributors to society by their vary nature.  And this is a key part of what Baldrige is all about. 

How to Ace Deployment

Posted by Pamela Wong

So did the title of this blog grab your attention? I borrowed it from a session at Quest this morning presented by MidwayUSA--and the topic certainly grabbed the attention of attendees at the conference. Presenters spoke to a packed room.

Jeff Larkin,  VP of Merchandising, spoke about the "who, what, and how" of deployment, including a list of 15 ways that MidwayUSA has found effective in communicating approaches throughout its organization. He reminded us that fully deployed approaches contribute to sustainability.  

Jeff talked about what should be deployed: organization-wide information, such as the MVV; strategic plan; and all approach-related information. He emphasized how important it is for senior leaders to lead deployment. Their involvement greatly increases buy-in by the overall organization.

Several of MidwayUSA's strategies for achieving deployment jumped out at me:

1) Create a deployment communication plan for how you will reach work units, stakeholders, and customers with necessary information.

2) Create a common language. MidwayUSA combined the glossary from the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence with its in-house terms  to create a company glossary, which it posts on the intranet.

3) Create key communication points according to the group--whether employees, customers, or vendors. For example, MidwayUSA developed an online Vendor Resource Center.

4) Use R&R to reinforce deployment. MidwayUSA encourages many staff members to become state and national Examiners because of the tremendous learning this produces. Being an Examiner is a big time commitment, so the organization encourages it by public recognition, a day off after the commitment is completed, and a cash reward for each year the employee participates.

5) Measure! Make sure you are achieving deployment.

I hope some of these ideas stimulate your thinking about how to increase deployment in your organization. If you would like to see the slides from the presentation, they are available here.

 

 

What should your employees be doing?

Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon

Okay, I am cheering again. Quest for Excellence makes me cheer every year! I just finished listening to one of my favorite Baldrige people, Horst Schulze - Chairman and CEO of West Paces Hotel Group, and former leader of two-time Baldrige recipient Ritz-Carlton. Passion is synonymous with Horst and leadership is clear when you hear him speak. He told us how Baldrige is the framework for his new company and hotel management processes.

He made it all sound simple. All you need is clear vision, clear mission, clear customer service standards, and clear workforce requirements. And those workforce requirements are the same for all employees, regardless of what they are doing. Note they don't have employee functions ("chairs have a function", according to Horst). Employees all have four common requirements to guide them:

1. keep each customer (loyalty is critical)
2. find new customers
3. get as much money as possible from each customer (as long as it is moral, legal and ethical) - you are in business to earn money
4. look for efficiencies (not based just on cost-cutting, unless it comes from elimination of waste). Cost-cutting alone leads to cutting services that customers or employees value.

If point 3 is causing concern for public benefit organizations, reword it to "maximize return on investment from each customer (keeping it moral, ethical, and legal)".

Got it! Try it! Let me know what you think! And if you really want to be motivated, get a copy of Horst's session.