BLOGRIGE

How to Increase Your Accreditation ROI

Posted by Pamela Wong

 

The Baldrige Program had the opportunity to exhibit last weekend at the 2011 Annual Conference of the Accreditation Council for Business Schools & Programs (ACBSP). It’s always nice to reconnect with ACBSP’s friendly members, which consists largely of private U.S. colleges, but I met international attendees, too, from Kuwait, Mexico, Mongolia, and Slovenia, among other countries.

The Baldrige/ACSBP connection is strong, for ACBSP’s accreditation standards are based heavily on the Baldrige Criteria and even include a site visit. The conference schedule included a session on “Baldrige across the Curriculum,” and our Deputy Director Jeff Lucas presented another with Ray Eldridge, “Using the Baldrige Enterprise to Increase Your Accreditation ROI.”

Ray, associate dean for undergraduate studies and associate professor at Lipscomb University College of Business, serves both as a Baldrige examiner and as an accreditation examiner and mentor for ACBSP. In addition to ACBSP accreditation, the College of Business is involved with the Tennessee Center for Performance Excellence (TCNPE), a Baldrige-based program. TNCPE’s four levels make the ACBSP accreditation process much easier, he said. In addition, the Baldrige Criteria align the University’s regular and specialized accreditations and university and government requirements.

In today’s fiscal reality, Ray said that universities are becoming more entrepreneurial. Change is no longer optional. “Baldrige gives us the template to battle opposition to change,” he said.

The bottom line is results, which account for nearly half of the Baldrige scoring process. While most organizations collect and record data for measurement, high-performance organizations go beyond to analyze and interpret—to manage—data. “If we don’t have [results], we may lose retention or enrollment and may not be able to get the faculty that we want,” Ray said. “Lipscomb is using our state Baldrige Program to impact our culture and processes.”

To access slides used in the presentation, click here.

Meet the Twins

Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon

What twins is he talking about, you ask. The twins that are in the Criteria for Performance Excellence. The twins that have been the subject of recent discussion on our LinkedIn improvement thread. I am referring to the Baldrige Scoring Guidelines twins: ADLI and LeTCI. They are fraternal, non-identical twins, but like most twins are kindred spirits since their birth and closely linked in all they do. As most people around Baldrige know ADLI: approach, deployment, learning, and integration are the scoring dimensions for process-related items in the Criteria and LeTCI: levels, trends, comparisons, and integration are the scoring dimensions for results items. The maturity of an organization is determined by their maturity in each of these dimensions, on a Criteria item by item basis. The Scoring Guidelines, on pages 65 through 70 of the Criteria for Performance Excellence booklet, describe the maturity against each dimension at each increasing scoring range. You also notice that integration is in both process and results scoring dimensions. Integration is the primary tie that binds our twins to each other. A key piece of integration is whether the results we measure reflect results for our key organizational processes and if those results drive decision-making on strategy, need for innovation, and process improvements.

So, what does this all have to do with the improvement thread on LinkedIn? The comment that several people made is that examiners rely on the Scoring Guidelines for judging maturity, but Criteria users frequently rely solely on the Criteria requirements and do not take advantage of the Scoring Guidelines as a mechanism for both gauging improvement and maturity and for guidance in understanding how to reach that next level of maturity. Together the Criteria and the Scoring Guidelines form the full systems perspective for guiding and sustaining an organization. I liken the Criteria and Scoring Guidelines to the younger sibling and the older twins. The young sibling learns the criteria that are important to being part of the system (the family) and the older, wiser twins have learned how to succeed or fail in the family by growing and maturing to become increasingly valuable members of the family and sustain the family.

I hope this brief analogy helps organizations appreciate the richness of the combination of Criteria and Scoring Guidelines to guide progress and sustainability. This has been a rather different blog post than my usual. I would like to hear your reactions. And how does your organizational family measure up?

A Customer Metamorphosis: How Do You Become Your Customer?

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey

At Baldrige examiner training this year, we put a lot of emphasis on stepping back from simply practicing creation of a key product (writing strength and opportunity for improvement comments for applicants of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award) in order to view the product from the eyes of the customer. In other words, we practiced morphing into a customer and viewing our product from the customer's perspective in order to ensure that what we were producing was what the customer really wanted and needed.

Since 2009, the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program has been surveying its applicants for the Baldrige Award using a net promoter score. Such a score is considered a measure of performance through the eyes of customers, who can be divided into three categories: promoters or loyal enthusiasts who will continue with and refer the program, passives who are satisfied but unenthusiastic customers and are vulnerable to competitors, and detractors who are unhappy customers. We have been asking our award applicant customers about their likelihood to reapply for the Baldrige Award, how relevant they found the Criteria for Performance Excellence, and how useful the feedback reports they receive are in helping them improve, among a few other key measures. While our scores were role model in the first two areas, they were just the opposite in the feedback report category.

Through additional surveys and in-depth interviews, we expanded our knowledge of what Baldrige Award customers are doing with our product (in this case, the comments received in feedback reports) and what they need and want. For example, we know the following:

• When we give an award applicant a comment about the strength of a process, the applicant understands that the process is something that Baldrige examiners feel it should continue to do. And process examples provided in the comment will be considered best practices of that applicant.
• When we suggest to an award applicant that it may have an opportunity to improve a process, we need to convince the applicant to invest in improvement. For example, can we show that not investing in this process might affect the applicant's sustainability, cause it to lose customers, or cause it to lose market share?
• When we point out an applicant's most beneficial results that support its mission or vision, applicants understand that they should continue to invest in achieving these results and tracking particular measures.
• When we point out results that the applicant may need to improve, we need to really convince the applicant to invest its limited resources in improving that particular measure. And to convince the applicant that certain results are critical, we need to provide comments that point out the issues to which the results might be tied: for example, the issues that might be keeping the CEO up at night, the issues that might be holding the organization back from improving, and the issues that the organization might need to focus on for sustainability.

Your customers' perspective and what they need and want from your products and services are the focus of category 3 of the Criteria for Performance Excellence, which asks how you listen to current and potential customers, how you determine their satisfaction and engagement, and how you engage customers to serve their needs and build relationships? 

So how do you know, from a customers' perspective, if your product or service is meeting your customers' needs? How do you know what your customers desire from and are doing with your products and services?

Are You Flying Blind?

Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon

It all started last Friday morning when I was driving to work. Part of my commute is on a winding country road that is one lane in each direction. I usually see only occasional traffic, moving at the allowable speed (OK, maybe a little above). Friday, the traffic was at a standstill and rapidly blocked me in from front and back. As we eventually started creeping forward, all I saw around each bend was the same string of cars facing the next bend. After about 15 minutes I wondered do I proceed blindly or do I break the law, cross the double yellow line, and risk being hit by oncoming traffic when the occasional car speeds by? I stayed the course and eventually came to the site of a bad accident, which by now had numerous police cars, a fire engine, and an ambulance all in my lane and off on the small shoulder. On occasion cars were now being stopped in the opposing lane of traffic to let a few cars in my direction through. I hope the injuries to the cars' occupants were not significant.

But what could this possibly have to do with the Baldrige Program and the Criteria for Performance Excellence? While my car situation certainly wasn't strategic, I sure felt like I was "flying blind." One of my favorite questions in the Baldrige Criteria is in Item 2.1, Strategy Development: "How does your (strategic planning) process identify potential blind spots?" Does your organization have a process for avoiding potentially predictable strategic blunders? Could you have prevented exploring a product or service that wasn't worth investigating or even worse actually producing? Were some companies so busy researching new films that they did not see digital photography coming along? Was your company improving its "buggy whip," while competitors were developing automobiles? Or were you relying on your check business while electronic banking was taking over? Do you have a process for scanning your environment, as part of strategic planning, to avoid missing major shifts in technology, the economy, products, or business models? Can you foresee all potential change...probably not. But could you have caught more than you do?

I would define blind spots as a knowledge or strategic intelligence gap that leads to false assumptions and misguided strategic plans. Are all failed strategic objectives and plans due to avoidable blind spots? No, there will always be "game changers" that are unseen and closely held. There will always be some unpredictable surprises, but those may well serve as gained intelligence for the future.

Funding challenges for the Baldrige Program and all government programs were hard to see coming several years ago, but they should be significant factors in planning today. In the Baldrige Program, we are engaged in a strategy mapping activity to chart our future. We will be sharing our progress with our advisory bodies, the Board of Overseers and Panel of Judges, at their meeting next week to seek their guidance. As we progress, we will be seeking further input from our customers and key stakeholders, so stay tuned. We already benefited from some stakeholder and customer requirements input we received from Baldrige stakeholders, examiners, applicants, and conference attendees.

So, now I ask you, how is your organization preparing for the future? Are you identifying blind spots? Are you using intelligence gained from past blind spot exposure?

How to Survive and Thrive

Posted by Pamela Wong

During our recent examiner training, Harry Hertz was asked a question: what is the single, most important factor for a high-performing organization? His response was unequivocal: leadership. In fact, item 1.1 (Senior Leadership) of the Baldrige Criteria scored the highest among Baldrige Award winners in a study conducted several years ago.

Harry’s comments brought to my mind Freese and Nichols, Inc., a 2010 Baldrige Award recipient, as an outstanding role model in leadership.

Freese and Nichols is a multidisciplinary engineering consulting firm in Texas with a workforce of about 449 employees and revenue of $80 million. Founded in 1894, Freese and Nichols has worked on so many dams—just one type of its many projects—that passengers in a small plane could fly across the state of Texas from north to south and east to west and not lose sight of at least one of its projects.

How has Freese and Nichols survived and thrived for over 116 years? Here are just a few examples that show the role of its leaders.

Vision: The firm’s Baldrige journey began in 1995 in response to what was probably the company’s worst year ever. Although it remained financially sound, the firm made no profits. Leadership recognized this as a wake-up call. CEO Bob Pence calls the Baldrige Criteria a great road map. “If you can do the things in all these categories and do them well, you’re going to be a well-run company,” he says. In fact, the company’s leadership intends to select as its next CEO someone who embraces Baldrige.

 Ethics: Freese and Nichols’ leadership promotes an organizational environment that requires ethical behavior, and the organization has the awards to prove it. In 2007, the firm received the National and Tarrant (County, Texas) Area Business Ethics Awards given by the Foundation for Financial Service Professionals. In addition, it was recognized as having the strongest ethics by The Dallas Morning News “2010 Top Workplaces” program.

 

Sustainability: One of Freese & Nichols’ role-model areas is consistently strong customer service. Senior leaders visit their key clients to better understand their big-picture needs. They also involve clients in industry presentations, board and regulatory meetings, and sessions of Freese and Nichols University, thus increasing customer engagement.

 

In addition, senior leaders participate in succession planning. Training includes a one-year program designed to prepare a pool of candidates to take over senior positions as they become available. The curriculum includes corporate, engineering, and technical functions, as well as areas such as risk management and strategic planning.

 

“My goal is to teach these 15 people everything about how this company operates,” Bob says.

 

The organization also demonstrates fiscal accountability; it has had no debt throughout its history, other than for notes payable to divesting stockholders and a long-term lease for company-wide infrastructure. Its debt-to-equity ratio has decreased 6 percent over the last four years and is now 5 percent lower than the industry benchmark. “We never had to borrow a dime to keep the operation going,” Bob says.

 

To learn more about Freese & Nichols, click here.

An Earnest Fox or a Focused Hedgehog?

Posted by Bob Fangmeyer

History, and a host of organizational and personal improvement literature, is replete with the sage advice that extraordinary success comes from having a laser-like focus on the goal you are trying to achieve.

Everyone from Alexander Graham Bell and Jim Collins to the Dali Lama and Donald Rumsfeld have spoken about the importance and power of focus. Well, if it is so obvious why is it so hard to do?

All organizations are faced with a variety of competing needs and expectations and most organizations sincerely want to do as much as they can to meet them. Unfortunately, most don’t do a good job of first understanding the needs and expectations, strategically determining which are the most important, and then managing daily operations to ensure a focus on those that are most important. In fact, it is the sincere desire to “do it all” that frequently leads to a failure to excel.

Jim Collins, in his best-selling book “Good to Great”, spoke to this by quoting Isaiah Berlin who paraphrased an ancient Greek parable about the fox and the hedgehog.  

The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. The fox is a cunning creature, able to devise a myriad of complex strategies... Fast, sleek, beautiful, fleet of foot, and crafty—the fox looks like the sure winner...

Foxes pursue many ends at the same time and see the world in all its complexity. They are "scattered or diffused, moving on many levels," says Berlin, never integrating their thinking into one overall concept or unifying vision. Hedgehogs, on the other hand, simplify a complex world into a single organizing idea, a basic principle or concept that unifies and guides everything. It doesn't matter how complex the world, a hedgehog reduces all challenges and dilemmas to simple—indeed almost simplistic—hedgehog ideas. For a hedgehog, anything that does not somehow relate to the hedgehog idea holds no relevance.

While Berlin was speaking of the individual and Collins made the connection to the organization, I believe the analogy is equally beneficial when considering your key work processes. How many times have you witnessed cycles of E&I (evaluation and improvement) that actually became cycles of AC (adding complexity)?

We here at the Baldrige Program are earnest in our desire to make our processes better and more effective. We collect data, observe performance, evaluate outcomes and continually look for ways to improve. In some cases, this has resulted in adding complexity in an effort to make the process easier, more consistent, and more effective.

Case in point: The Examiner Preparation Course. Despite consistently strong post-training evaluations and external recognition as a top 10 leadership program, we knew that we had a number of opportunities for improvement.  So, in January 2010 we hosted a focus group consisting of a broad representation of examiners and Baldrige Award applicants in an effort to identify the critical components of a more effective Examiner Development model. One of the outcomes was the recommendation to streamline and refocus the examiner preparation course.

Since then we have made a concerted effort to take advantage of the unique training environment that is centered around collaborative peer learning and ensures that every new examiner has the opportunity to learn from multiple experienced examiners. The unspoken yet underlying hedgehog concept was to refocus the training on what makes it both successful and effective, “All Teach, All Learn.”  In short, we have pulled out virtually everything that doesn’t require the strategic utilization of the peer learning core competency.

The outcomes?  Well, time will ultimately tell, but so far the reviews and comments have been extremely favorable.  Just a couple of the comments I have heard so far:

Excellent session, good group and great facilitation... kept us on track, but really allowed the room to drive. I don't know if adult learning principles have been intentionally integrated into this year's training, but seemed different from previous 2 years I've attended.  This year felt like we really had an active, collaborative, experiential learning environment where we all of us were co-learners.  Really appreciated the time spent in dialogue, group work, active processing, and few lectures!

-Greg

 As I reflect on all the learnings and experiences it is hard to describe the experience to others. Spending a week with a like-minded group interested in improving this country is nothing short of inspirational. The class room instruction was some of the best I have experienced. I know that already the learnings have improved my ability to lead. The changes needed in the Healthcare system seem possible as I reflect on the dedication, passion, and expertise I observed this past week.

-Kimberly

 What about you? Are you, or your processes, a bit scattered and stretched to the limit—trying to do too much at one time? Are your processes detailed, complex, and merely good or are they simple, focused and achieving great results?

Note: Many of the principles mentioned above are described in the glossary and/or imbedded within the “Core Values and Concepts” of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. For an example of the hedgehog concept in action, check out Freese and Nichols a 2010 Baldrige Award recipient.