These are a Few of my Favorite Things: Top 10 Excellent Practices

Posted by Zara Brunner

Here are a few of my favorite things about the leaders from Baldrige winning organizations' recent presentations at the Quest for Excellence conference in DC.  The blog title may be a bit misleading if you were thinking Sound of Music..not exactly whiskers on kittens.  But close.  Since Nestlé Purina's Incredible Dog Team put on quite a performance for us and their presentations made it very clear that pets--dogs and cats alike--are their customers. 

So here's my list of the Top 10 coolest, most impressive things learned from these high performing, role model organizations that I want the world to know about:

1. Ears, Gears, Cheers, and Peers by MEDRAD is a management model and they work to get out of employees' way and empower them to make decisions based on customer needs.  This leads to results.  Fifty million people receive MEDRAD's products.  They "focus on customers and employees and know that the numbers will follow."  MEDRAD's motto is Performance. For Life.  And those of us who get a CT scan or any of the other medical device and intervention products and services from this company can rest assured that MEDRAD is committed to excellence, and performance does save lives. 
2. Nestlé Purina PetCare Company's research and innovation on products for customers; including all of the company's employees taking a two-day, customized "Skills for Innovation" course.  We heard a great presentation and saw an advertising montage reflecting how they tailor their products and enhance/innovate them based on customer requirements.  Each different market segment gets mined for insights and needs, which leads to innovation in the products, packaging, brand and more. Another interesting thing the company does is put together 40 person cross-functional teams to come together for three days to problem solve and innovate, and then Work Out Groups look at data, prioritize, and make the company better.  They achieve 95% implementation of the action plans that result from these groups.  We hear from leaders all the time that developing strategy is one thing, but the real rub is in execution.  I'd say that this implementation success rate shows that something is working very well. 
3. Want your business to last for 117 years or more?  Look into Freese and Nichols and what they've done.  This small multi-service engineering, architecture, and environmental science firm created a Futures Committee to spot and stay on top of engineering and market trends with a 20 year focus on the future.  The firm has also embedded Jim Collins' Hedgehog Concept into its culture with client service employee rewards programs, senior leader Executive Client Visits, Client Think Tank Panels (also for a future-focus), and classes at Freese and Nichols University--open to clients, of course.  As CEO Bob Pence said, "the first thing we built was our reputation."
4. K&N Management  focuses on guest (not customer) delight (not just satisfy)--read more about how they do this here.  If this small, fast-casual restaurant business can go out and visit the Seattle Fish Market, Disney, two-time Baldrige winning  Ritz-Carlton, Cargill, and the Texas-based Kincaids Hamburger, there's no reason why other organizations can't figure out ways to benchmark from the best.  You want work life balance in your organization? Consider hiring a chaplain to focus on Life Balance like K&N Management did. 
5. Low performers "suck the life out of the organization," so high-performing Studer Group, a virtual consulting company, focuses on selection and reminding everyone of their purpose.  Focus on "alignment of behaviors" not just alignment of goals, and your organization will see breakthroughs.  "It's about living the mission." It's about performance evaluation based on achieving results.  It's about transparency.  It's about culture.  And according to Quint Studer, "culture outperforms strategy every time." 
6. Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland, the 16th largest school district in the U.S., has 22,000 employees, serves 13 million meals a year, and has buses which travel around the world the equivalent of four times a day.  The school system went from "random acts of improvement" to the use of Baldrige to align systems and structures around a "Call to Action" to get the community involved to help them raise the bar and close the gap for children.  In the last three years, there have been no raises, supplies have been cut back, poverty increased by 57%, more students flooded the system--including English as a second language-- and yet results went up every year.  MCPS is now the largest International Baccalaureate in the US and out scores the state and the country on taking the SAT and scoring.  Look at this post on Putting Race on the Table and, as Dr. Jerry Weast, Superintendent of MCPS said at the conference, "don't tell me Baldrige doesn't make a difference." 
7. Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital focuses beyond satisfaction to a transformational way of "being" towards physicians.  They have a passion for partnerships in order to build loyal relationships.  Such physician loyalty has led to impressive clinical outcomes and national recognition and awards.  CEO David Fox said it's about "true communication-listening deeply.  With our ears, eyes, body, and heart to enter into the physician's world of commitment and responsibility, care and compassion.  Yes, these qualities differ in degree from person to person, among physicains, as among executives and human beings..."  The accompanying chart shows how they measure up on physician loyalty.     
8. Still wondering how or why to use social media?  Check out the socialnomics video referenced by CH2MHill.  They are dealing with elected officials --which some might perceive as not a natural target audience for new media--and have effectively figured out a way to overcome obstacles to use social media to connect with customers. 
9. In times of budget cuts and crises facing cities, counties, states, and the nation, the City of Coral Springs has been using data, not money, to respond to customers' needs.  Budget cuts and the "great recession" can be overcome and customers needs can still be surpassed.  Their recommendations: think strategically and creatively and by all means, make decisions using data and manage by fact.
10. Past Baldrige small business winners MESA Products and Stoner doubled revenue growth with Baldrige (read a previous blog post for full details).

Unfortunately, I couldn't attend all the sessions so I undoubtedly missed some other great pearls of wisdom and best practices.  Harry, The Baldrige Cheermudgeon, captured some in his April Insights column so feel free to keep reading and keep learning.  Then pick one thing--just one thing--to work on for your organization based on this list of great ideas from these high performing organizations. 

Comments

[Bryan Zak]

Fantastic job of bringing together the value of the "Quest for Excellence". I am going to forward this to at least three people right away, a city manager, a republican student action group, and a small business development team. It's all about sharing results and your post has helped tremendously with this effort. - Thank you

[Zara Brunner]

Wow, Bryan, thanks so much. I love Quest for the very reason of being able to hear all these organizational best practices, compelling stories, and networking with such dedicated, intelligent people. Appreciate your feedback and the action you are taking!